Bunkbeds
by Dee-and-Essy
Summary: WARNING: Contains bad language, character bashing, imaginary basilisks, inappropriate student teacher relations, babelized French, crossdressing, 'The 24 Hour Soap Opera Network', violence, Communism and eye of newt.
1. Harry Potter and the Horrible House-shar...

_This fic is dedicated to Lady Alyssa and Random Flatmate/Dent who wrote the awesome 'Bagenders' and gave us permission to rip off some of their work in this fic._  
  
  
****

Episode One: Harry Potter and the Horrible House-Share

Harry Potter woke up one morning, with a strange agoraphobic feeling. During the summer, he slept surrounded by the imposing walls of the cupboard under the stairs or a veritable mountain of Dudley's cast-off toys. Even at Hogwarts, the velvet curtains of his four-poster enclosed him, so the idea of waking up with a breeze on his face was a little unnerving.

He lay for a moment in that strange state between sleep and wakefulness, a little perturbed until he recognised the sounds of Ron's loud snoring from beside him. He relaxed. Everything was normal. After a while, he began to wake up properly and took in the fact that the breeze was entering the room through a person-shaped hole in a large picture window. In the bed beside him, Ron was sleeping with a sparkly orange crash-helmet on his head. If he strained his ears, he could hear the vague sound of chains clanking in the basement, many floors below. Through the broken window, Hagrid could be seen sleeping on the lawn. Harry's memories returned with a vengeance. Things weren't normal at all. They hadn't been normal for two and a half weeks.

Harry decided his most pressing concern was getting to the bathroom and walked out of the bedroom. There was a rota of household chores pinned to the other side of the door, listing the names H. Potter, R. Weasley, G. Weasley, H. Granger, D. Malfoy, S. Snape, A, Dumbledore, R. Hagrid, R. Lupin, S. Black and L. Voldemort. Harry examined it and changed his mind. His first priority was getting out of this bloody house-share. 

***

They still weren't sure who'd trapped them all in the house together, without their wands, but they were all agreed that some form of punishment would have to be meted out when they actually escaped. It had been Hermione's idea to videotape the evidence of their plight so that a future jury would be able to see how they'd suffered. Dumbledore, who'd started watching a little more Reality TV than was healthy had decided to set up a Diary Room upstairs for Big Brother style confessions. After only twenty-four hours, the tapes had devolved into unabashed bitching about the other housemates and were too obscene to be shown in any courtroom, ever. Snape, who was in charge of the household finances, had privately resolved to sell the footage to the Fox network as soon as the opportunity arose.

The actual housing situation was chaotic at best. With only four actual bedrooms, suitable rooming was hard to come by. Sirius had claimed the basement for himself and Remus because of the monthly transformations and other than moving in boxes labelled "Chains and Manacles," they were not seen often. Hagrid had made the excuse that since he didn't fit into the house properly, that he'd feel more at home keeping the garden in the backyard. Unfortunately for Hagrid, the garden was fenced in on all sides by concrete and barely contained his giant form when sleeping. At night, he could be seen lying in the grass, with Fang and Fluffy on either side of him and a small yellow Boy Scout tent covering his middle.

With all the undesirable locations already claimed, and Harry's refusal to see anyone sleep in the cupboard under the stairs, Snape, Ron, Harry, Draco, Hermione, Ginny and Dumbledore were left to battle for the remaining three rooms. It had all seemed easy enough. Harry and Ron had claimed the first bedroom on the third floor, which boasted a rather large picture window looking out onto the back garden. The girls had taken the other room on the third floor with the enormous walk in wardrobe and Snape and Draco had taken the first bedroom, which contained nothing but bunk beds. This had regressed into a rather loud bitch fight over who would get the top bunk, with Draco losing miserably and vowing revenge. 

Thing had gone smoothly enough during the first week but the nightly occurrences of Ginny's terrible, screaming nightmares took their toll on Hermione and she devised a plan to find a more quiet room. Upon viewing the cupboard under the stairs she decided that it was unliveable and found Draco in the kitchen looking through Ginny's purse. With a huge smile Hermione had taken the seat next to him and propositioned him; she'd take the vile bottom bunk under Snape and he could have her single bed and extreme closet space. 

Hermione was gratified by Draco's elation at the idea of closet space, although the dreamy smile could have come from the frosted pink lip gloss he'd fished out of the purse and the idea of being on hand to snoop through more girlie things. Then all that was left was to explain the switch to their respective roommates. They did this by telling Ginny, then letting her tell Snape. Since Ginny was having one of her episodes at the time, Snape got the impression that from now on he was going to be rooming with a giant basilisk and the knowledge that it was only Hermione came as a distinct relief.

Dumbledore had watched the proceeding with undisguised amusement and had merely set up a gigantic red and gold hammock along one wall of the living room. The hammock had an uninterrupted view of the television set which to the household's horror and Dumbledore's delight only got two networks, Channel 5 and the 24 hour Soap Opera network.

How they'd ended up with Voldemort in their midst had come about in a rather random manner. It had started as a normal day, well as normal as any day got in a house occupied by a bunch of grouchy, captive wizards, a large percentage of whom are senile, crazy or werewolves. The morning had started very quietly, with the occupants of each room laying low and entertaining themselves. It all had been interrupted by a huge crash from the attic followed by eerie silence.

Adjusting his weight on the hammock, Dumbledore gazed around the sitting room, with a mysterious smile and shining eyes. Harry sat in the couch upside down, feet above the headrest and head on the floor, asleep. Draco sat on the other side trying desperately not to look like he was watching "Passions" which was the soap opera of the hour and every so often pegging Harry about the head with Smarties. The sleeping boy was oblivious to the perfectly drawn circles that covered his face, making a target. Every few tosses, one of the sweets would land in Potter's slightly open mouth and Draco would giggle and make a mark on the notepad in his lap. So far his floor to mouth ratio was pretty good. 

Turning his attention back to the roguishly handsome, if completely dense, Luis on the screen, the old wizard didn't acknowledge Ron tearing down the stairs with a look of terror on his face. At the bottom of the stairs he caught himself on the rail, stopped dead, jammed his hands in his pockets and started whistling. Seeing that no one in the room was paying attention to him he turned and crept past the odd atmosphere of the TV room and proceeded to the kitchen. 

With resolve to be calm he stopped in the doorframe and regarded the opposing forms of Snape and Hermione who both had their faces buried in newspapers with untouched coffee in front of them on the table. Every so often, a page would be turned or a slight noise made under the breath but all in all it was creepy. Getting up his nerve Ron strode into the room with what he hoped was his nonchalant face. Hermione later told him that it looked terribly like his constipated face.

"So Hermione, anything good in the post?" Keeping a huge smile plastered on his face, he poured himself some fruit juice.

About two moments passed with silence but the sounds of pouring juice and newspaper pages being turned. Without even having to look up from her paper Hermione managed to give him the Look, something he didn't need to see, as it lowered the temperature in the room about thirty degrees all on it's own. "What did you do, now?"

"Oh-oh nothing," he stammered through his fake smile. " I was just poking through the attic, you know, trying to escape watching 'Passions'. No biggie... really."

"But?" Snape lowered his paper and looked at the now colouring redhead with narrowed eyes. "Mr. Weasley, it is my experience that if things ever get too quiet, it's a relative whistle blow to your family to cause chaos. It would be best if you just came right out with it so that the damage can be fixed."

"That's not true, all the time."

"But it is this time," Hermione stated from behind her paper, a quick glance up showing her suspicion was true by the redness of his ears.

Taking a breath Ron downed his juice and eyed the door anxiously, as if plotting a quick escape. "The attic was full of all sorts of books and things. And there was this shiny one on top of a pile. It looked like one of those Quidditch books by Whisp. No harm in pickin' that up, right? So... I did. I picked it up and opened it andtherewasthisweirdlightandProffessorQuirrelfelloutofitmutteringaboutnotbeingallowedanyprivacy. SoIrandownhereandlockedtheattic..."

As if on cue, Ron's babbling was stopped by a bang and the sound of Ginny Weasley shrieking with terror from upstairs. 

Forcing a smile, Ron ignored the terror in the eyes of the other occupants of the kitchen and made a dash for the door. "Er... gotta go." 

***

From his place on the sofa, Draco listened to the shriek that tore through the house, followed closely by the sound of Ron sprinting up the stairs and Fang barking maniacally from the yard. Low voices and the scraping of chairs on tile signalled Hermione and Snape leaving the kitchen and following Ron up the stairs with composure. Pausing he could hear the sound of voices and then the familiar sound of breaking glass, which indicated that Ron had annoyed somebody and been thrown out of a window again. 

"What was that about?" Draco absently asked Dumbledore as he took up his game again and missed Harry's mouth for the tenth time in a row. This was not a complete loss though; he still counted 20 points for bouncing it off his nose. The scoring system of his game was rather simple. 100 points for the mouth, 50 points for the nose, as these were the most obvious targets. Then you scored 20 points for the eyes and 10 for the cheeks and chin. The most inspired part of the game, Draco thought, with some pride, was the 500 bonus points for the hitting the scar. He hadn't yet decided if there should be points awarded for getting candy in the ears, but he'd deal with that when the situation arose.

Across the room, the elder wizard seemed to ignore the question and waited for the next commercial before coming up with an answer. "Professor Quirrell is upstairs scaring Ms. Weasley with Lord Voldemort, is this week's Soap Opera digest over there?"

Shaking his head Draco popped a Smartie into his own mouth. "Didn't see that one coming."

"I have actually seen this coming for quite awhile." Smiling affectionately in the direction of the stairs, he rummaged around one-handed under his hammock and pulled out the television guide. With a sigh of satisfaction, he opened the guide and scanned the pages. Draco didn't seem impressed.

"Would warning us have been too hard?

***

After dealing with a very dazed Professor Quirrell, who had fallen through the trapdoor of the attic onto a now concussed Ginny Weasley, the housemates had tried to deal with the new arrival with care. If he was going to stay, he was going to have to be a productive member of the house, which mean cleaning and cooking duties. This went over relatively well with him. Frankly, he was amazed that they hadn't killed him on the spot, considering Voldemort was clearly visible on the back of his turban-less head and ecstatic about this new opportunity to take his revenge on Harry. The boy in question however, got to fulfil one of his lamer childhood dreams by forcing Voldemort to sleep in the cupboard under the stairs, with plans of course, to run up and down the stairs in the middle of the night. 

There were relatively few problems in settling the arch-villain in; he was very agreeable and civil in conversation. His manner became a little more drawn when Ginny had become responsive again and had thrown herself at the Voldemort side of the body shrieking, "Tom, you are my only friend!" Then promptly jumping up, covering her eyes and running from a giant snake that nobody else could see. Ginny Weasley had suffered from recurring basilisk nightmares, since her first year at Hogwarts, but the head injury she'd received, seemed to have destroyed her grasp on reality. Mostly, there were just a lot of questions that everybody wanted to ask the hybrid person, whom Hermione had suggested they name Quildemort for convenience.

While everybody in the room was familiar with Voldemort's diary trick, there was some confusion as to why he had immortalised himself in one of his weakest incarnations. Sixteen-year-old Voldemort had had a much better chance to commit evil. Voldemort explained that he'd created a different magical diary for every year of his life and that one-day he was hoping they would be as famous as The Hitler Diaries. When Hermione patiently pointed out that the Hitler Diaries were forgeries, Voldemort confessed that he hadn't been entirely honest in his own. He'd lied about a few things, specifically his appearance. Didn't they think his cheekbones looked sexier? 

Ron told Voldemort that, no, he pretty much still looked like a wrinkly middle-aged wizard who'd been super-glued to the back of somebody else's head. He then left the room quickly, via the window. 

***

"I have to say that I am a bit surprised that Professor-Lord Quildemort has mixed into the workings of the house so well." Dumbledore beamed into the camera of the diary room looking happy as a clam. "He seemed very sorry for his inadvertent injury of Ms. Weasley, in fact he keeps apologising to everyone for it. I've known both Professor Quirrell and Lord Voldemort as separate people for many years and I must say that as one person their personalities really do even out. I think it's a fantastic idea that they've gotten together the way they have. It's rare to see two men so close."

Popping a Smartie into his mouth the old wizard looked thoughtful for a moment. "I really think things are going well. This living situation is going to be a real learning experience." 

***

So all in all, despite having an evil wizard fall out of a book and destroying the last of young Ginny's sanity, the day had been relatively uneventful. It had ended quietly with everyone settling into their respective rooms for sleep.

Under the stairs, Voldemort was lying awake. His mind was on more important things than sleep... like murder. Ignoring the protests of Quirrell, they crept up the stairs to the third floor. Without a sound, Quildemort pushed open the door to Ron and Harry's room. The light of the nearly full moon shimmered in from the recently replaced picture window and across the two beds. One of the beds contained Ron who wore a sparkly orange helmet on his head to protect him during any nocturnal window dives and an ugly pair of hand-me-down pink flamingo pyjamas. In his sleep he kept muttering something that sounded an awful lot like, "Harry, can I towel you dry?"

Putting this image out of his head, Quildemort crept toward the other bed, a blank look on Quirrell's face and an evil smirk on Voldemort's. Pillow in hand, ready to smother, he stood beside the bed, ready for the final revenge on 'The Boy Who Lived' when a sudden draft from the window shook the bedsheet revealing the bed as empty and stuffed only with a pillow. Turning on his heel Quildemort stalked from the room cursing and made back for the tiny room under the stairs, foiled again.

In the next room over, Harry stood ready for revenge of his own. Standing in front of the bathroom mirror, he'd been forced to scrub the target mark from his face until the skin had been pink and burning. He would have been much more convinced by Draco's excuse that it had all been an evil plot of Voldemort's, if he hadn't later found a score card on the couch labelled "Peg Potter" in Draco's handwriting. With an 'Evil Ernie's Incredibly Indelible Ink' marker in hand he approached Draco's bed with an eerie gleam in his eyes.

Ignoring Ginny who flailed about wildly in her bed, alternately banging her head on the headboard and muttering about snakes, he took hold of the fabric of the blanket. Pulling back the corner of the comforter, Harry suppressed a shriek as Hedwig and Pigwidgeon swooped from the mattress, pecked a few times at his head then abruptly perched upside down from the ceiling fan. Covering his head with his arms, he ran from the room, fearing for his life. 

The owls had become very weird lately. Hiding in unlikely places and trying to attack people. Most of the housemates ascribed their paranoia to the fact that they'd been hanging around with the equally psychotic Ginny. Draco ascribed it to the large amounts of drugs he'd secretly been feeding them.

In the hallway, Harry heard the sound of knocking and peered down the stairs to see Draco pounding on the door to Hermione's room enraged.

"You tricked me! No closet space is worth this," Draco hissed at the door while clenching his fingers into his green silk pyjama bottoms. 

Pounding on the door again and getting no answer, he kicked it stubbornly. "WHY DOES NO-ONE PAY ATTENTION TO ME?"

"One generally tries to be asleep at this hour of the night Mr. Malfoy, or have you forgotten that there are other occupants of this room." Snape's silky voice stopped him dead as he looked up, mid kick at the door, into the unamused eyes of his head of house.

Snape stood with his arms crossed over his white T-shirt and his pasty white legs on view to the world from his green boxers that asked 'Who's Your Potions Master?' in large silver letters. Blinking a few times in horror, Draco began muttering some excuse when Snape spoke again. "Ms. Granger is not in the room and her present location is unknown to me. So if you will excuse me, I am going to go get a drink of water and then hopefully sleep undisturbed."

Striding down the hall and then down the stairs he left Draco gaping in front of the door. Creeping down the stairs Harry came up beside him and laughed. "You looked like a fish gaping at Snape. The sight of the man in boxers renders you speechless?"

"Actually, Potter, I think I may need therapy after this."

Following Snape's lead to the kitchen for a glass of water, the duo stopped dead at the bottom of the stairs where Snape and Quildemort already stood, struck dumb in horror. Following their line of vision they saw Hermione and Dumbledore sitting side by side in the hammock with their eyes fixed on the ever-present Soap Opera network. As if the pair sitting in a hammock together wasn't horrifying enough, the conversation the two were having was beyond disturbing.

"No, no, no Professor," Hermione was saying. "You need to catch up. Leo and Greenleigh are really no Luke and Laura as far as couples go. He isn't after her for her money anymore since he stopped dealing with that nasty mother of his. He married this Laura though because he felt bad for her and she was supposed to die, but then she got that heart transplant when the princess died."

Dumbledore was looking at the television set quizzically. "But they aren't married anymore? What about Tad and Dixie?"

"No, neither are they. Dixie was cheating on Tad because his stalker had her convinced he was already cheating. I know what you're thinking but she's not with her doctor anymore. Adam Chandler Jr. though, he's been in a lot of trouble despite all that attention from Bianca a few months ago. I just don't think there is any hope for that family especially since Erica is all set up to go to jail at the moment. Who'd have thought!"

"I thought Tad and Dixie had staying power," Dumbledore said wistfully. "Did Haley ever go to prison for the murder of Eileen?"

Hermione shook her head. "She didn't, since Eileen is alive and frankly the Chandler name gets you out of everything. Mateo is in prison right now because of Leo's mother who is the real drug dealer... so poor Haley had to spend Christmas alone. It was so sad, I almost cried."

The couple on the hammock droned on and on about what the screen proclaimed as "All My Children" an American soap opera institution. In terror Harry watched as Quildemort hurried toward his cupboard with his fingers stuck in his ears humming and Snape turned on his heel and ran up the stairs with all thoughts of getting a drink of water gone. 

Harry exchanged a glance with Draco and the two boys turned and walked back up the stairs, shaken and mentally wounded. They'd never have figured Hermione the type; she didn't even have the excuse of being utterly mental the way Dumbledore did. As the two parted ways for their respective bedrooms there was no animosity, there were just some things that you come out of being a little bit closer. Terror of in depth conversations about Leo and Greenleigh was one of them. They'd never be the same.

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	2. Cleaning is a Drag

_This fic is dedicated to Lady Alyssa and Random Flatmate/Dent who wrote the awesome 'Bagenders' and gave us permission to rip off some of their work in this fic._  
  
  
****

Episode Two: Cleaning Is A Drag

"I think I'm getting fond of them," Hermione said cheerfully as the window repairmen's truck pulled away from the front curb.

Since they had been in the house, they'd been forced to call them almost daily for the amount of windows that were constantly being broken. At first, it had been easy to say that they were just new owners and they had no idea how a human sized hole came to be in the large picture window. By the tenth day, they'd progressed from that to shoddy framing straight into motioning toward Ginny and mumbling about a history of violent mental illness.

Their morning visits made Hermione's day, seeing as though the repair man was young and cute. She was grinning as she brought her glass of orange juice and her bagel to the table with her. Snape sat in his customary seat looking disagreeably down at an open record book. Every now and then, his frown would deepen and he would make a precise mark in the book. Hermione stifled a laugh at the thought that the morning conversation with Rico the repair man didn't have the same effect on him as it did with her.

"What does that bring the total on glass to?" 

Draining his coffee mug, Snape narrowed his eyes at her. "As you well know, it doesn't matter about the total, seeing as expenses are being allotted per person. As it stands, however Weasley and company should skip the middleman and just start blowing glass as a hobby. Either that or that blasted window should be boarded up and I could be done with it."

Hermione ripped apart her bagel idly. "That wouldn't be the right solution."

"I could mistake that sentiment for Gryffindor stoutheartedness," Snape drawled. "Except I happen to know that your motives come less from a desire for Potter and Weasley to have a window and more from your desire for more visits from Juan your fantasy man." 

Ignoring his last comment Hermione smiled at Ron as he entered the kitchen, looking around suspiciously. "Good morning, Ron."

"Hermione," he said, walking further into the kitchen then changing his mind and turning back. Running his fingers through his damp hair, he looked pleadingly at his friend. "Any idea where I can hide in here?"

The question of why, never got to be asked as a thud proclaimed that the bathroom door had been thrown open upstairs and the unmistakable sound of Quildemort shouting began. "WEASLEY!"

Seeing Hermione's look, Ron shrugged. "Took the last towel. No place to hide in here?"

Closing the record book with a loud snap, Snape looked at the frantic boy with one eyebrow inclined. "Go into the basement, you stupid boy. I don't want to have to call the repairmen out again."

Nodding in thanks Ron ran out of the room and to the basement door, which he promptly wrenched, open and then eased shut behind him. In the kitchen, Hermione bit her lip, as Quildemort's shouting became more frantic. Footsteps on the stairs and then Harry's horrified gasp from the living room pointed toward the fact that Quildemort had left the shower without the aid of a towel. For Ron's sake, she hoped he wasn't caught.

***

Only when the house was completely silent did Ron emerge from the basement. Shaking and with a haunted look in his eyes he edged into the living room and sat on the couch stiffly. Draco looked up from the episode of Milkshake he was engrossed in, to stare at the pale boy. "What's wrong with you?"

Ron didn't answer.

"Quildemort is in the backyard telling Hagrid about an evil topiary he dreamed up, you don't have to look so worried. Are you alright?"

"Nothing is going to be alright again," he muttered as he stared past the television set. "God is dead."

Draco scooted away from him on the couch; one insane Weasley in close proximity to him was enough. "What was down there? Crying big-eyed puppies or something else equally sad to Gryffindors?"

Lunging at the other boy, Ron held Draco's throat in his hands. Shaking him into the couch cushions, he tried to warn him. "You don't want to know, Malfoy. It's horrible down there. Horrible."

"Oh yeah?" He taunted, pushing the redhead away. "We'll see about that."

Marching toward the door Draco smirked back at the horrified look on Ron's face. He smiled one more time just to twist the knife as he started down the steps and then closed the door firmly behind him. The seconds ticked past and Ron watched the door with narrowed eyes for a moment before turning back to the television. Slowly his nausea began to abate.

Some time later he heard the door open and close again followed by Malfoy's slow footsteps. As Draco sat down, Ron took note of his even paler complexion before looking back at the screen. For a long time, neither spoke. Getting up the nerve to break the silence Ron said in a low tone, "Horrible isn't it?"

Drawing his knees up to his chest, Draco began to rock back and forth refusing to look at Ron. "We never speak of this again."

***

By the time the boys had recovered a little, it was nearly time for lunch. The house was in its usual state of chaos and disorder when Hermione made her way downstairs to set the table.

"Beating the bludger," said Harry.

"Grabbing the golden snitch," Ron countered.

"Holding out your hand and saying 'up'."

"What are you doing?" Hermione asked, wandering into the kitchen, where Harry and Ron were deep in conversation.

"Ginny's hiding in a cupboard again, so we're having a competition. The one who loses has to talk her out."

"Oh. What's the game?"

"Seeing who can think of the most Quidditch related metaphors for masturbation," Ron told her. "Stooging the keeper."

Hermione rolled her eyes at the boys and was about to walk out in disgust, when a voice from the next room suggested "Polishing the broomstick." Hermione was nearly trampled in the chaos that occurred when Harry and Ron realised Dumbledore had joined in the masturbation conversation and both made a run for the protective safety of Ginny's cupboard.

Taking a seat at the kitchen table Hermione arranged the napkins and the salt and pepper shakers evenly and picked up the newspaper for further reading. A moment later Snape entered the room, cauldron in hand and a slight bounce in his step. It was his night for cooking again, something that put him in an amazingly good mood and sent the rest of the house for cover. It seemed that Snape didn't see much difference between potions and cooking. After the first empty economy sized jar of 'Pickled Eye of Newt' had shown up on the counter they had all begun looking much more carefully at their food.

"I wouldn't open any of those cupboards if I were you," Hermione advised through her paper. "One of them contains Ron, Harry and Ginny."

With his trademark sneer he set the cauldron on the custom burners on the counter and started throwing ingredients into it. After a few minutes of puttering around he stepped back with a look of triumph as a smell that wasn't repulsive in the least started to rise from his creation. Hermione watched his progress with amazement; perhaps they were going to break the running record of emergency take out orders.

Sirius Black entering the kitchen snapped her back to attention. Nodding absently to her, he headed straight for the refrigerator and promptly bent over into it so only the ass of his well-worn jeans were visible. Exchanging a puzzled look with Snape, Hermione realised that she'd half forgotten he and Remus lived with them. Somebody evidently hadn't, though. Strange whimpering noises were coming from the cupboard, which sounded more like Ron than Ginny. Sirius emerged from his searching with left over pizza, a half-empty bottle of 7UP, four tins of Pedigree Chum and a jar of Spanish olives. Without saying a word he walked back out of the kitchen and a moment later, they heard the basement door bang shut.

Narrowing her eyes slightly, Hermione shrugged and settled her sights on the bubbling cauldron. "What are you making, it smells… good."

Snape turned on the oven to preheat before taking his seat across from Hermione and taking up his parts of the paper. "Minestrone soup, but I've run out of eye of newt. I don't know if the consistency will be correct but I think I found a good substitute."

"I honestly don't want to know." Hermione turned the page of the newspaper. "Desert?"

Nodding, Snape looked back toward the cauldron. "Chocolate cake."

"Snake?" The shrieking form of Ginny Weasley tore out of the broom closet, sending dustpans and push brooms flying across the kitchen floor. Through the open door they could see Harry and Ron crouching in horror at the sudden light and behind them three huge jars of a slimy substance from the wholesale club.

With a dark look, Snape made his way over to the cupboard as Harry and Ron scrambled free. "I knew I had bought more of that. No meal is complete without eye of newt!"

Trying to keep the tears from welling up Hermione watched in resignation as he fished out the jars and added an amount of their content into the cauldron. Instantly the smell in the room became vile. Despite having spent the past year championing the cause of the house-elves, she had to admit there was something to be said for having decent cooks around who didn't have to be forced out of the basement with a dog whistle and heavily bribed to prepare food for everybody.

***

"It's sad what's happening to Ginny," Draco told the cameras in the diary room later that evening. After she'd been sent screaming from the cupboard, Ginny had gone upstairs and proceeded to trash their room. There had been mention of evil, giant, basilisk-newts, but Draco had chosen not to ask. "Ever since Quildemort arrived, she's become more and more unhinged. Last night I woke up and she wasn't in her bed. I eventually found her under _my_ bed, hiding from a magic snake that only she could see. It's all very Freudian if you ask me. It's pretty pathetic when a person represses their sexuality to the point where it only gets expressed in subconsciously, like that." He shook his head seriously, then a thought occurred to him. "Hey, I'm her roommate. If she dies, do I automatically get her make-up? Wait. I mean skirts. Wait no, CDs. Yeah, that's it, CDs."

***

Hermione tripped as she was coming down the last step into the living room later that day. Catching herself on the banister, she picked up the thing that had caught her, a trampled sketchbook. Flipping through the pages she noted that since all the pictures were of large snakes eating members of the household, it was probably Ginny's. Carrying the book with her she stepped through the clutter of junk that covered the living room floor, nearly turning her ankle before she even got to the couch.

Dumbledore wasn't in his hammock, though how he'd gotten out was beyond her. The pile of sweets and junk that had accumulated beneath it, had spread until the elderly wizard would have to have jumped to land on a clean space. Dropping the sketchpad on the couch Hermione placed her hands on her hips and bellowed, "EVERYONE GET YOUR LAZY ASSES DOWN HERE NOW!"

A moment of shocked silence filled the house before being replaced by a stampede of feet coming down the stairs. Quildemort arrived first, having come from under the stairs in fear of the rush of feet from above, followed by Dumbledore from the kitchen who held a tub of ice cream in one hand. Crossing her arms over her chest Hermione waited as Ginny hopped down the stairs followed by a wary looking Snape who kept at a safe distance from the girl. They never knew when she was going to slip into one of her episodes.

Harry, Ron and Draco arrived last from the backyard where they had apparently been trying to play Quidditch; the remains of a green tomato plant were still evident on Ron's shirtfront. Keeping her glare steady as she surveyed the ranks, Hermione motioned wildly at the mess all around her with wide eyes. The blank looks she got in return did nothing to stop the tantrum they sensed coming on.

"This place is a complete pit, I have never seen this kind of filth before."

Draco smirked. 

"Haven't you ever been to Weasley's house before?"

Ignoring Draco's grunt of pain as Ron kneed him in the groin, Hermione tried to pace but was limited to a space on the floor of about two feet by two feet. "No more Quidditch, no more television, no more psychotic delusions, no more anything until this place is shaped up. Now get going."

Watching as Hermione stomped off in a huff to check on the state of the kitchen, Harry turned to Ron and shrugged. "Cleaning won't be that bad, do you think someone should go tell Sirius and Professor Lupin that they have to clean up as well."

Ron's face took on a haunted look and he glanced nervously at the door to the basement. "I think that what's down there is better left alone. Yes, leave it alone."

At that he turned and walked up the stairs looking thoroughly green. 

***

"It's disgusting," said Hermione inside the privacy of the diary room. "The whole house looks like it's been pulled apart by a herd of nifflers! There's broken glass in almost every room, because Ron keeps antagonising You-Know-Who and Professor Quirrell and the less said about the mess in the kitchen the better. I'm never letting Dumbledore help with dinner again. I don't care if he defeated the dark wizard Grindlewald, he's incapable of following a simple recipe without adding three bags of sugar and tipping most of the rest of the ingredients over the floor. Not to mention the state of the floor under his hammock. I'm _sure_ I saw something moving under there, but I suppose it could have just been Ginny. Anyway, they'd better have the place spick and span by this evening or there'll be trouble!"

***

"I don't see why I have to help you clean your room," Voldemort complained as he and Quirrell glanced around the state of Harry and Ron's room. "It's not as if we're ever in here."

Shaking out his comforter and smoothing it on his bed, Harry looked at the glass and junk that littered the floor. "That's not true, all that glass is from you throwing things at me when you think I'm not looking. Of course, some of it's from Ron falling through it, but otherwise. And see all that laundry there, it had to be taken out of my drawers because I had to lock all those sharp objects you kept trying to stab me with."

Quirrell rolled his eyes as he felt Voldemort pouting on the back of his head. Though he knew better than to voice the opinion he was rather sick of having his lord and master in his body, there was no reprieve from his eternal whining. Leaning down he took hold of Harry's Firebolt and his shoulder-bag. Frowning at the mental coercion Voldemort was using, he gave into the demands of his master and tossed both things out the open window.

"Hey, what's that about?" Ron glared at him as Quildemort started picking things up at random and throwing them out the window one after another. "That's not being helpful in the least."

Harry barely glanced up from making his bed in time to see Quirrell take hold of Ron and toss him unceremoniously out the window along with the rest of the refuse from the floor. Feeling the anger build up in him, he wiped his hands across his forehead and his ever-burning scar and glared at his arch-nemesis.

"I have had enough."

Placing his hands on his hips, Harry walked to the window and shouted at the smirking man in front of him. "It's bad enough that you killed my mum and dad and forced me to live with my rotten aunt and uncle. But do you really need to keep throwing my best friend out of windows?"

***

There was a muffled shout from the house and a moment later; Ron came sailing through an upstairs window. For a moment, the only sounds were of Ron muttering in a vain attempt to cast Wingardium Leviosa on himself before he hit the ground. Three interested faces watched from the bedroom window. In the end, Ron's attempts at wandles magic failed miserably. Luckily, his fall was broken by Hagrid's Slow Flowering Neptune Lotus, which bore his weight for a second, then collapsed into a heap of broken petals. 

"Cor, thanks Hagrid! Good job I landed where I did, eh?"

He beamed up at the tearful half-giant and ran back into the house with his arms full of the objects that had preceded him out the window. Hagrid just sighed and fished a seed catalogue out of his pocket. Back to the drawing board, again

***

Coming out of the bathroom Draco hazarded a glance into Harry and Ron's room to check on their cleaning progress. Harry lay on his newly made-up bed asleep with his arm supporting his head drooling onto his sleeve. Ron was on the floor with three large steel buckets full of broken glass. On his hands and knees, equipped with dragon-hide gloves he was sifting the carpet for more. The rest of the room was impeccably neat aside from the glass and it made Draco grit his teeth knowing he had to check the state of the room he and Ginny shared.

Crossing the hall, he braced himself to open the door but it was flung open before he reached it. Ginny stormed out of the room dressed in green rain goulashes, bright pink ski pants, the pointy Hogwarts ceremonial hat and a too-big Weasley jumper with an B on it. She was dragging a large sack that towered over her and frowning. Not knowing whether to be horrified at her outfit or to ignore it because it was Ginny, Draco made his way into the room without a word.

To his amazement, the room was clean, dusted and vacuumed. Looking around he realised that even his bed had been made. Stifling a grin, he caught his reflection in the mirror of his full vanity and leaned in to inspect his flawless complexion. Pulling open the top draw with intentions of looking for lip gloss, he was knocked back by Pig and Hedwig screeching and swooping toward him. Crashing to the floor he covered his head and curled into a foetal position, which did nothing to deter the two owls.

After circling him several times and pecking at his head the two owls were content to swoop out through the open door but not before they both did their business on the back of Draco's shirt. Cursing, Draco crawled to the door and slammed it shut before pulling himself to his feet. His reflection told him that the owl nasty had run down to the seat of his pants as well as the fact that his hair was a wreck.

"I think I'm going to eat those bloody owls, one of these days," he muttered to himself as he pulled off his shirt and pants. "At the very least I have to adjust their dosage. They're a menace when they're this hyper!" Decked out in nothing but black socks and a pair of underpants covered in cartoon monkeys, he made his way to the closet. The very empty closet. Pulling open Ginny's closet he saw that it to was empty, save for one overly sparkly green ball gown. Thinking back to the departure of his demented roommate Draco gathered that she must have been braving the cellar with all the laundry in the room. That scenario explained her outfit rather well he mused, as his eyes fell back on the only stitch of clothing in the room.

"Oh fuck."

***

Dinner was never a dull affair in the house. Most of the meal was spent trying to identify what was on the plate without being pinned by Snape's glare and the rest was trying not to upset any of the housemates. Since Ginny's delusions could be set off by most things at this point, not just by words that sounded like snake, it made for some interesting conversation. 

Harry had set the table under Hermione's drill sergeant like direction and Dumbledore and Quildemort sat at the far side of the table with a bag of sweets. Dumbledore was the only person in the house who had no complaints about Snape's cooking but Hermione rather suspected that he just dropped in whatever candy he had on hand to make it appeal. Ron had been assigned the job of serving the meal under Snape's scrutiny and was running back and forth from the table with his crash helmet on. He'd seen the effect of a concussion on his sister and now no task was safe enough.

Ginny skipped in at the last minute laughing hysterically as she sat next to Draco's empty seat. Seeing that no one even looked up at her laughter Ginny cleared her throat an announced, "Pretty Princess Draco will be down in a moment."

With a slight lift to her eyebrow, Hermione jabbed her fork into the goo on her plate.

"This looks… um... interesting. What is it?"

"Essence de l'Aine Suée, a speciality in my family," Snape said in a sombre, satisfied tone as he poured himself a glass of wine.

Ron tugged at his fork, which was embedded in the goo and wouldn't budge. "Is there cement in this stuff?"

Hermione winced. She could feel the anger that was radiating from the scowling man beside her. Fixing his glare on each person in turn, Snape slipped into the silky voice, he usually saved for Neville Longbottom on particularly nasty days. "I don't expect any of you to understand the subtle art that is cooking. It is a precise science and I don't see anyone else inclined to take up the gauntlet and try cooking on their own."

"Now, now Severus. I think it's good." Dropping a handful of Lemon Drops into the goo, Dumbledore stirred it up and took a bite. Chewing the mess up thoughtfully he swallowed and grinned, nodding with his pleasure. Sensing the tantrum that would follow if they all didn't begin eating and at least pretending to enjoy it Harry took up his fork and jammed some of the goo into his mouth. Taking his lead Hermione did the same, followed by Quirrell despite Voldemort proclaiming loudly that he didn't eat anything French.

Suddenly Harry started coughing, his fork falling to his plate and his face turning bright red. Shaking, his coughing continued until Ron rose to give him the Heimlich. It was about then that they all realised that the coughing was caused by hysterical laughter and not choking. Following his line of vision the entire table froze, forks halfway to their mouths, food half chewed as Harry managed to choke out, "Hey Draco." 

Framed in the doorway the blonde Slytherin boy glowered at the table. With his arms crossed over the fitted bodice of the frilly ball-gown he wore, he dared any one of them to question him. Strapless and simple, the gown was a blue-green sheath with a belled bottom that covered his feet and accentuated his tiny waist. All together, he was quite the picture in the gown with his perfect porcelain skin. The image was marred only by the dark look he was shooting at his hysterical enemy. 

"Something funny, Potter?"

Harry cleared his throat and smiled angelically despite his flushed face. "Oh no, just a bit of goo… I mean dinner stuck in my throat. Have some, it's delicious."

Frowning at Harry for a moment, Draco then glared at his giggling roommate who was still wearing her ski pants and sweater with no one questioning her appearance. With a huff Draco flounced into his chair and swirled the contents of 

his plate with his fork. Across the table from him, Ron was staring at him with a bemused expression on his face.

"Do you have something to say to me, Weasley?"

Ron blinked at him.

"Yeah, nice dress."

"What did you say?" Draco growled in a dangerous voice.

"I said, pass the dressing." Motioning at the bottle of Thousand Island dressing to Draco's right, the redhead smiled brightly at him. "What did you think I said?"

Scowling Draco stared into his plate. At the far end of the table, Voldemort hissed at Quirrell to let him see the boy in the dress, causing Draco to clench his fork until his knuckles turned white. To his right Ginny Weasley had finished her plate and had gone to the stove to serve herself more much to Snape's delight. Dinner progressed in silence until Hermione finished her plate and rose, asking each person at the table if they'd care for some something to drink.

When the mention of Coke to Dumbledore made Ginny drop her fork, Hermione tactfully skipped asking her and set her sights on the fuming Slytherin. "Do you want a tiara, Malfoy?"

Slamming his palms down on the table, Draco jumped to his feet in anger. "Do you think you're funny, Granger? Take a good long look all of you, but I will have you know that it takes more than peasants like you to break a Malfoy!"

Stomping from the table, he left the dining room in shocked silence. Turning to Snape, Hermione narrowed her eyes in thought. "What was that about? All I asked was if he wanted a tea or a coffee."

"You see it in all the best Slytherin families," was all he said before excusing himself from the table.

Quirrell, bringing his attention back to his plate and away from the doorway which Draco had just exited through, turned to Dumbledore. "That is Lucius Malfoy's son? He's not much like his father, is he?"

From behind, he heard Voldemort laughing. Dumbledore merely popped some more sweets into his mouth with a forkful of the goo before answering with a smile. "I see that you don't know Lucius very well."

***

Ron was assigned the bitch job of doing the dishes while the rest of the household retired to the living room for evening television. The program of the evening was the biography of Susan Lucci, which even Dumbledore was barely paying attention to. He instead had taken up the household pastime of 'Peg Potter' though his handicap was much greater then previous players. Since Harry was asleep on the couch his angle on the hammock made him have to throw over the arm of the couch to get anywhere near his face, something he took into account while scoring.

Ginny sat on the floor with her legs extended under the coffee table. To all outward appearances, she seemed to be watching the television but in actuality, she was doodling the demise of her housemates in her sketchpad. From his seat on the couch Quirrell could see her drawings clearly and made a mental note to avoid the girl from now on. Voldemort in the other hand was oblivious to Ginny and her homicidal intentions. He was having a staring contest with Pig who was perched stiffly on the banister that ran up the stairway. 

The evening progressed and the sounds from the kitchen went from running water to electric sander and then finally to plates being placed in cabinets. Ron emerged as the sounds stopped, his T-shirt soaked through with soapy water and a full garbage bag held at arms length. Catching sight of Voldemort staring at his owl, he stopped and looked between the evil face and the rigid bird.

"What are you looking at?"

Without blinking Voldemort answered, "Your owl doesn't look too well. This is the first time I've seen that thing, when it hasn't been moving and searching for blood."

"There's nothing wrong with my bird," the redhead said defensively, though when he gently poked it, it fell from the rail and landed on the floor undamaged but in the same pose it had been in previously. 

"Bugger."

Picking the little statue-like bird up by the foot in his free hand, Ron walked out into the back garden. Hagrid had just finished setting up his little yellow tent for the night and was whistling shrilly for Fang and Fluffy to join him. Ron thought that whistling was a little unnecessary, since the dogs were never more than three feet from him at all times in the tiny garden. Though the more he thought about it, the less he wanted to question Hagrid at all, since he spent his days in the tiny yard, never joining them for meals or using the inside bathroom or anything. No, that definitely wasn't a line of thought he wanted to pursue. 

"Hiya, Hagrid." Dropping the bag in the outdoor bin he settled himself on the concrete steps and looked up at the half-giant. 

Hagrid beamed down at Ron. "Ullo, Ron. Nice to see you coming outside through a door for a change."

Ron coloured slightly. "Sorry about all that glass. And your plants… I really feel bad about the bonsai, the tomato plant… and all the rest."

"I know yer didn't mean to," Hagrid said as he sat down with his feet under his little tent. "What brings yer out 'ere in the dead of night other than the rubbish?"

Frowning, Ron held out the prone form of Pig by his foot. "Something's wrong with Pig. He looks just like Neville did when Hermione cast Petrificus Totalus on him. But that can't be the probem, since nobody has their wands."

Tossing the little owl to Hagrid, Ron watched while he examined it. Hagrid tapped it on the head, shook it a little, then tossed it back. "What yer've got there is the most stoned owl I've ever seen. Who's been feeding 'im?"

"St-stoned?" Ron's green eyes widened to huge proportions. "I thought he'd just been around Ginny too much… How do you get an owl stoned?"

Pushing the image of the little owl surrounded by bongs, pipes and hookahs out of his mind he looked down at his pet. "He sleeps in Ginny's room… Malfoy!"

Jumping up, Pig fell from his lap and landed with a bizarre clanging noise on the step. That barely stopped Ron who picked up the owl and ran into the house with a rushed, "Thanks, Hagrid!"

Tearing up the first flight of stairs, he ran past Hermione and Snape's room where they were lying on the top and bottom bunk respectively, reading in a tense silence. Panting by the time he got halfway up the second flight of stairs, he stopped dead at the door to Draco and Ginny's room, clutching the little owl in his fist. Throwing open the door, he froze in terror.

Standing in front of the mirror was Draco, still in his ball gown, but since dinner, he had added frosted pink lipstick and elbow length satin gloved to his attire. Shocked Ron merely stared at the sight, before easing the door closed and backing up slowly into his own room. When the door was shut firmly behind him he put Pig securely on his bedside table and slipped into his pyjamas and into his bed, still in shock.

With the covers pulled up to his chin, he smiled knowingly at the little statue. "It all makes sense now. Living with that, I'm lucky you haven't just killed yourself."

Jamming his face into his pillow, he tried to fall asleed, hoping against hope that his dreams wouldn't contain anything he had seen that day.

Want to see Ginny's sketchbook?  
Why not visit the site?  
http://www30.brinkster.com/bunkbeds/


	3. The Bathroom Rota from Ipanema

_This fic is dedicated to Lady Alyssa and Random Flatmate/Dent who wrote the awesome 'Bagenders' and gave us permission to rip off some of their work in this fic._  
  
  
** Episode Three: The Bathroom Rota From Ipanema.**

In the third floor bedroom he shared with Hermione, Severus Snape was lying in bed, clad in a black T-shirt and a pair of green boxer shorts which proclaimed "I've got a thirteen inch wand!" As he lay there, a slender hand reached up from below to hit the 'off' button on his alarm clock. Snape's own hand instantly shot out and caught the intruder's wrist in a vice like grip. No longer feigning sleep, Snape opened his dark eyes and looked into Hermione's guilty brown ones.

"Good morning," he said evenly.

"Morning, Professor."

As the two sanest members of the household, Hermione and Snape, generally found it in their own best interests to work together, but some situations were still a case of survival of the fittest and the early morning bathroom run was one of them. Snape let go of Hermione's wrist and she instantly bolted for the door, wrenching it open and running out onto the landing. Snape swooped down from the top bunk like an overgrown bat, landed on tip-toes and sprinted after her.

***

Hermione reached the bathroom door, only to find that she hadn't been as swift as she'd hoped. Draco, Ginny, Harry and Dumbledore were all lined up outside the bathroom, making faces and listening to Quirrell sing in the shower. Every so often the singing would be interrupted by the high pitched whining of Voldemort complaining that Quirrell had got soap in his eyes.

"We're trapped in the house twenty four hours a day. Why does everybody always rush for the bathroom? It's not like we have to go out somewhere." Draco was saying.

"I don't see you getting a lie-in." Hermione snapped back.

"That's because, unlike all you smelly oiks, I'm actually bothered about my personal hygiene. The rest of you are just doing this to torment me!"

"Rubbish! You just like staring into the mirror for hours and quoting lines from Snow White."

"What did you just say?"

Hermione backed down under the force of Draco's glare and decided that whoever had trapped them all in the house together wasn't as batty as she'd first thought. A few more days of this and there would definitely be a massacre, probably instigated by her.

"WHAT'S TAKING SO LONG?" Draco was yelling into the door. "YOU DON'T EVEN NEED TO SHAMPOO!"

"An extra lot of nose hair to pluck?" Suggested Ginny. 

Draco made a face like he was about to be sick, then gestured right behind Ginny and yelled "Snake!" Ginny squealed and ran forwards at top speed. Quildemort, who chose that moment to step out of the bathroom, clad only in a towel, connected solidly with her and they both went down in a storm of limbs. Draco took advantage of the confusion to nip inside the bathroom and lock the door. Ginny was last seen running blindly down the stairs with Quildemort's towel flapping from the top of her head.

Hermione sighed. It was going to be one of those mornings.

***

While they waited for Draco to get in his three hour daily preen, the rest of the household assembled downstairs for a meeting. In the glorious tradition of house meetings in shared houses, nearly half the household were absent. Draco was showering, Hagrid and the two in the basement never showed up for meetings and Quildemort was still trying to retrieve a towel from the airing cupboard, where Ginny Weasley was hiding, guarded by two semi-psychotic owls.

"Look, we need a rota."

"Why not just go in age order?"

"Starting with the youngest?" 

Snape did some quick mental calculations. "No, oldest."

"No way!"

"I've had just about enough of you Potter!" Snape reached reflexively for his wand and, chagrined when he couldn't find it, snatched up a pack of Smarties instead and brandished it menacingly.

"But I'm second youngest. There'd never be any hot water left when I got there!"

"At your age Potter, I suspect cold showers would do you worlds of good."

"Headmaster, tell him!"

Actually Harry, Professor Snape's idea has merit." Dumbledore had spotted the advantages in being the eldest member of the household. "Why don't we try it for a week and see?"

***

"Come _on_ Malfoy! Give the rest of us a chance to wash."

"While I'd be the first to agree you need it, Weasley, I refuse to be rushed."

"What takes you so long anyway? Honestly Malfoy, you're such a girl!"

From within the bathroom came a grunt that could have meant anything really. Ron gave the door a half-hearted kick and went off to see if Harry was napping again. There was a household 'Peg Potter' scoreboard posted in Quildemort's room, since it was the only place Harry refused to go and Ron was the only person not listed yet. Not so much because he was opposed to the game as because nobody else would lend him any Smarties. 

Ron had only been gone for a moment, when Snape arrived upstairs, anxious that everybody know about his wonderful new bathroom rota. He banged on the door to the bathroom.

"Get knotted, Captain Stiffy. I don't care if you smell!"

Snape walked slowly away. Living in this house was doing strange things to Lucius Malfoy's son and he refused to be held responsible.

***

Once the details of Snape's new bathroom rota had got out, the younger members of the household had called a war council in the diary room.

"There's no way things can go on like this," Hermione addressed the camera from her confined space on the solitary seat jammed between Ron and Draco with Harry in front of her feet. Ginny sat underneath the chair itself and screamed bloody murder when anybody tried to move her. "There are twelve people in this houseshare and-" Draco coughed. "Well, eleven bodies." Draco coughed again. "Only eight of whom use the upstairs bathroom. Look, do you want to go on strike or not?"

"From washing?" Draco asked. "Not! They won't care anyway, it means they can spend longer in the bathroom is all."

"They'll care when we start to smell."

"Not half so much as we will," Harry pointed out, "since we'll be closer to the source. Anyway, why do you care? Your birthday's September second. You're the next oldest after Quirrel."

"So you lot want to give in?"

"No, of course not. We just need to change the plan is all."

"And you have a better plan, I suppose?"

"Well, be honest, Granger"Draco smirked. "Who does Machiavellian better than a Slytherin?"

***

Soon, their four-prong attack was well underway. Ron had been allotted the task of taking out Quildemort. Ron had stuck a trampoline in the back garden. When Quildemort next tried to toss him out the upstairs window, he bounced right back in, hitting Quildemort with such force that both sets of teeth rattled. Hagrid seemed positively delighted with the scheme, since it meant for once his flowers survived intact.

Hermione and Draco had teamed up to take on Dumbledore. Hermione's extensive knowledge of... well, everything, really... had allowed her to divert the household television to a VCR, while transmitting the footage from the diary room downstairs on both channels. Since, at the time in question, Hermione and Draco were in the diary room, taking it in turns singing Celestina Warbeck and Celine Dion songs, Dumbledore was soon ready to offer anything in exchange for a tape of that afternoon's Passions and a reprieve from the bad kareoke.

Harry's task, while the most dangerous, was also the easiest. Since his very existence seemed to send Snape over the edge. All he'd had to do was follow Snape around all morning, repeating everything he said, but in a sarcastic tone.

Ginny just followed her usual morning routine of running around, screaming wildly and breaking things. However, the others had given her a set of stickers which she was dutifully attaching to the wreckage of everything she destroyed.

Before long, another house meeting was called...

***

"What," Snape asked icily, "is this?" He help up one of their stickers btween his fingertips as if it would give him a nasty disease were he to touch it any more.

"What," Harry mimicked, "is this? Honestly what does it look like? It's a sticker, isn't it?"

"I can _see_ it's a sticker, Potter!"

"I can _see_ it's a sticker, Potter!"

"Stop that immediately." 

"Stop that immediately."

"Stop it."

"Stop it."

"STOP IT!"

"STOP IT!"

Snape swatted at Harry, but he ducked and continued chanting everything Snape said back at him.

"Headmaster, tell him!"

"Headmaster, tell him!"

Dumbledore was much more concerned with the television. Hermione and Draco had come downstairs for the meeting, but since Ginny had retired to the diary room and was sitting there in a fetal position staring unblinkingly at the camera, it was almost as frightening as the VH1-fest he'd been subjected to earlier.

"He m-m-means the l-l-l-logo," said Quirrel, helpfully.

The stickers had been Hermione's idea. They were left over from her house-elf campaign, but they'd tip-exed out the original messages and all the stickers now sported a drawing of a bathtub with their movements name inside. They had point blank forbidden Hermione from choosing the acronym.

"What's T-T-T-TUBS?"

"It stands for Teens Unhappy with Bathroom Sadism," Draco informed him. "Unless you scrap the rota, they'll be showing up more and more frequently on items of your property. That is to say, on the _remains_ of items of your property." He smirked and Snape scowled at him.

"He looks just like Lucius when he grins like that."

"He looks just like Lucius when he grins like that."

"Oh for heaven's sakes, Potter!"

"Oh for heaven's sakes, Potter!"

Snape growled under his breath, but didn't speak again.

"If we scrap the rota I can have my video back?"

Draco nodded, but Snape looked affronted.

"It's not yours to scrap!"

"It's not yours to scrap!"

"James Aerius Potter was an ugly, wanker with no brains."

"Severus Alembus Gelsomina Snape is an ugly wanker with no brains," Harry chanted back without missing a beat. Then he had to leap behind the sofa to avoid Snape's wrath. The rest of the room cracked up.

"Who told him my middle name was Gelsomina?"

"Who told him my middle name was..."

"Oh shut up, Potter! We'll scrap the rota, all right?" He pulled it from his pocket and tore it up dramatically. "Now, I want to know who told him my middle names." He glared at the two likeliest candidates. Dumbledore was busily getting his tapes from Hermione and seemed innocent enough, but Voldemort was sniggering suspiciously.

"So that's the way it is! Very well. We've given in to your ridiculous demands, now if you'll excuse me," Snape said in a voice promising unspeakable doom to everybody present, "I have to go make dinner."

***

Five minutes later, TUBS had reconvened in the diary room to air some more grudges. Dinner was fast approaching and the household's younger inhabitants were feeling mutinous. "If I have to eat one more meal that tastes the way disinfectant smells I am going to go mad!" Hermione declared from her cramped seat.

Draco grimaced as he got an inadvertent elbow to the ribs. Elbowing Hermione back, he frowned at the camera.

"I wouldn't say disinfectant. Everything has this nasty gasoline flavour. It tastes the way petrol stations smell."

"Nuh-uh," Ron argued. "It's smells like the dungeons in damp weather but tastes like someone spilled ammonia into Marmite and then put it on a plate."

Seeing the disgusted looks everyone else was shooting him, Ron looked defensive. "What?"

" I always wondered what you Weasley were fed as children to be so damn insane," Draco said with a grin. 

Ron glared while Harry piped up. "It's the consistency that's the worse part. It's slimy like jelly but more… solid. They kind of burst in your mouth, that's when the disinfectant taste gets the worse."

"Like I said this has got to stop or else Snape is going to find himself locked in the basement with Sirius and Professor Lupin."

Ron, Harry and Draco all looked at Hermione in horror. "What?"

"That's just cruel."

***

As was usual dinner turned out to be a battle with Harry asking Snape to let them order pizza. The actual conversation had digressed to the low point of being made of nothing but "Please," "No," "Please," "No," in rapid succession. Watching the battle and the ill concealed glee on Snape's face, Hermione had gathered that the actual refusal had nothing to do with not wanting to order out and everything to do with Snape's desire to punish Harry for that morning's events by refusing him anything he asked.

When Hermione had thought to test this theory by asking Draco to ask, since Snape was his head of house, she'd gotten nothing but a surly glare from the blonde boy. When she offered the use of any of the dresses or skirts in her closet as a way to sweeten the deal she'd been forced to abandon her theory to run into the other room and laugh at the look on his face. Not amused, Draco had stayed at his seat at the kitchen table, entertained by the fight that seemed never to end.

Luckily for them, Dumbledore had solved the argument with an intervention. He'd offered to do the cooking for the evening seeing as though the television had been commandeered by Ron who'd given into the temptation of programming on Channel 5. Unbeknownst to them at the time Dumbledore knew how to use only one kitchen appliance, the blender. How this had come about was a long involved story from his party days with Nicholas Flamel, when they had been trying to come up with all the uses of dragons' blood. All that they'd learned however, was that you should never mix dragons blood with alcohol and ingest it. It tended to have nasty side effects.

"You're not going to put anything like… say… eye of newt in there, are you Professor?" Harry asked tentatively, eyes darting from the blender to Snape who stood with his arms crossed against the countertop. 

Dumbledore merely smiled and tossed anything he got his hands on into the mix. There was a collective sigh when the only things produced were very potent margaritas that were blessedly free of the Snape staple. As if slighted, the dour Potions Master was seen sticking one of the ingredients in question onto a cocktail stick and dropping it into his drink.

***

An hour or so later, most of the household was assembled in the living room. No mean feat for a room that wasn't built for so many people. Harry had fallen asleep in his customary position on the sofa with Ron on one side, watching 'When Strippers Attack' and Quildemort on the other. Quildemort had found one of the scorecards for Peg Potter and was turning out to be quite good at it. Draco and Ginny were sat together, talking, in Dumbledore's hammock. The two were bonding to an extent that would probably have alarmed the others, had they been sober enough to notice. Dumbledore himself was in the kitchen making up the sixth batch of margaritas. At the table, Hermione and Snape were accusing each other of cheating at Scrabble. In point of fact, both were cheating, but lacking a copy of the official Scrabble dictionary to settle arguments, the contest became about who could cheat the best.

"Nimietor isn't a word!"

"I'll have you know that nimietor is a very useful variation on the engorgement charm. What on earth has Flitwick been teaching you?"

"More than you ever did, Mr If I Were Ever To Foster Enthusiasm In My Students My Head Would Spin Around And Fall Off." Hermione told him acerbically. "Anyway spells are Latin. Latin's not allowed."

"Headmaster!" Snape yelled in the direction of the kitchen. "Come and tell Miss Know It All that nimietor is a valid Scrabble word."

"Why him?" Voldemort whined. "The greatest sorcerer in the world is right here in the room!"

"Second greatest," corrected Ron automatically. Voldemort shot him a look which foretold collisions with picture windows in his near future, but just then Harry started to wake up, so Voldemort contented himself with framing Ron, by slipping the half empty pack of Smarties into his lap.

Dumbledore emerged from the kitchen to join the discussion, but finding that Snape and Hermione had already progressed to arguing about something else, merely placed their drinks beside them on the table. Contentedly he settled down beside Ron on the sofa to watch the true life story of a lap-dancer who suffocated a man with her cleavage.

Over on the hammock, Draco and Ginny, who was having one of her better days, were discussing the pros and cons of frosted pink nail polish, when Harry realised that he'd yet again woken up looking like a demented zebra. He noticed the half eaten pack of Smarties in Ron's hand and chased his best friend out of the room, bellowing at him. Voldemort watched them leave, sniggering like Mutley and Dumbledore merely spread out on the couch beside his old nemesis as an expert deconstructed footage of what was being called 'the unfortunate implant incident'.

"There's no way I'm allowing that one." Hermione's strident tones rang out from the corner with the Scrabble board. "For a start it's two words, not one."

"It's hyphenated."

"I'm still not allowing it."

There was a crash from upstairs and the sound of Hagrid bursting into tears outside. After a moment Harry and Ron returned to the room through different doors and sat down in front of the TV again as if nothing had happened.

"Look it's a well known phrase in the wizarding community."

"The rulebook says no hyphenated words."

"The rulebook was written by muggles."

"Anyway I've never heard of it. Potions-position?"

Draco and Quildemort both started noticeably paying more attention to the argument in the corner.

"Don't tell me you've never heard of The Potions-Position?"

"Of course I haven't, you made it up."

Draco and Quildemort started sniggering. Ron seemed to gather up both his brain cells and spoke up.

"Actually, Hermione, I don't think he has. Back in Third Year, when Fudge sent us ministry cars to take to Kings Cross, one of them had a bumper sticker that said 'Slytherins do it in the potions position'." He paused, thinking hard. "I'm pretty sure it wasn't hyphenated, though."

"What is it then?" said Hermione in the tones of somebody who is sure they've discovered a winning argument.

Snape paused. "It's a… position."

"What _kind_ of position?"

"If you don't know I'm not going to tell you."

"If you don't know I'm not going to tell you," she repeated back in a mocking tone. "No wonder nobody ever learned anything in your lessons...Gelsie!"

Stung, Snape leaned forward over the table and glared at her.

"You're too young to know!"

"You're too old to demonstrate!"

"Am not!"

"Prove it!"

"FINE!"

The sound of the two of them stomping angrily up the stairs was interrupted only by the sound of Harry coughing violently at the sketch Quildemort had been drawing on the back of an envelope, of two stick figures in the potion-position. Everybody else just sat there, shell shocked. Everybody except Ron that is, who had wandered over to the abandoned Scrabble board and was examining Snape's tiles.

"Hey, he didn't have the right letters to put 'potions-position' anyway. Weird!"

***

Ron tore his eyes from the sobbing form of the on screen stripper who was pleading her innocence in a freak accident that had occurred when she'd tossed her thong into the crowd and blinded an elderly man. Next to him, Dumbledore was humming, oblivious to the annoyance it was causing to the rest of the room. As the credits for the program began to roll Ron turned to the headmaster, trying his damnedest to stop the nervous tick he was developing in his cheek from irritation. 

"What are you humming," he finally asked when curiosity got the better of him.

"A muggle song I heard once in a movie," Dumbledore said as he took a sip from his frosted glass. "Have you ever heard it? It goes something like 'You put the lime in the coconut and mix it all up." He then continued humming the said verse over and over again.

Quildemort, to the other side of Ron was laughing hysterically at this point just from the look of horror on Ron's face. Tossing a random candy at Draco who had fallen asleep in the hammock, Harry smirked, " At least he hasn't got the Tequila song stuck in his head. Dudley spent one whole summer watching 'Pee-Wee's Big Adventure' again and again. That song is the worst thing to get stuck in your head."

Ron laughed, "That's nothing. Dad once got us a TV set, from work. He put it in the living room and we all watched Lambchop together. Then the twins started singing 'The Song That Never Ends.' Mom made Dad take the TV outside and burn it."

Dumbledore kept on humming, moving his head back and forth in time with the beat. 

"Th-th-there is something w-worse," Quirrell put in, putting his empty glass on the cluttered coffee table. "'Girl F-From Ipanema', I heard it the f-f-first time I was in a muggle elevator. I could never go n-n-n-n-near one again."

"I don't think I've heard that one," Harry murmured into his nearly empty glass. Quirrell then began humming it and after a moment, Voldemort followed. 

Ron didn't know whether to laugh or cry when Harry caught the tune and started tapping his fingers on the coffee table in accompaniment. Despite the fact that three other people were singing a different song, Dumbledore kept on humming happily, forcing Ron to slide from the couch on to the floor. He would have slid under the couch to take cover, but his sister had been occupying the space ever since Hermione and Snape had gone upstairs together. Picking up some of the Smarties that Voldemort had not been able to get into Harry's open mouth, Ron jammed them in his ears and crawled under the coffee table to find silence.

Vaguely over the muted noises, he heard the faint whine that indicated the Dumbledore had somehow found a kazoo.

***

Hermione woke up the next morning and immediately wished she hadn't. In her opinion there was only one thing worse than waking up in the top bunk of a pair of bunk beds sprawled all over your potions teacher who was wearing a pair of his trademark cheesy boxer shorts and that was waking up in the top bunk of a pair of bunk beds sprawled all over your potions teacher who _wasn't _wearing a pair of his trademark cheesy boxer shorts. Add to that, the knowledge that Snape was extraordinarily talented at feigning sleep and was very probably awake, but just lying very still so that he wouldn't have to be the first to acknowledge the situation and you had a freaky hybrid of all Hermione's worst nightmares that didn't include plummeting to her death from a berserk hippogriff. This was like her worst nightmares met her other worst nightmares and they had kids. She disentangled herself and climbed quietly down from the bed, grabbed her robe and headed for the bathroom. If it weren't for the acute knowledge that alcohol was to blame for her current predicament, she'd have said she needed a stiff drink.

Want to do it in the Potions-Position?  
Why not visit the site?  
http://www30.brinkster.com/bunkbeds/


	4. The Morning After

_This fic is dedicated to Lady Alyssa and Random Flatmate/Dent who wrote the awesome 'Bagenders' and gave us permission to rip off some of their work in this fic._  
  
  
** Episode Four: The Morning After.**

Draco was feeling rather hungover when he eventually woke up the next morning. He made his way downstairs, only to see Hermione sneaking down the hallway in her bathrobe. She didn't meet his eye, just carried on towards the bathroom.

"You going to be long in there?"

"I will never be clean again," she replied dramatically, before closing the door.

Draco smirked, pleased that he wasn't the only one suffering, then headed for the kitchen to get some painkillers.

***

In the living room, Harry and Ron were hunched over the Scrabble board, engrossed in a game of rude-word Scrabble. They weren't paying the blindest bit of notice to the conversation that Snape and Dumbledore were having on the far side of the room. In fact, Ron only took his eyes from the game to eat more of his breakfast. He was eating cereal, but having seen the state of all the bowls in the kitchen he'd decided to do without one. He was currently pouring Cheerios directly into his mouth, then pouring milk in after them. Harry, who had fared slightly better in the kitchen, was scooping up Weetabix from a butter dish using a spatula. Draco, on the other hand, was extremely interested in the teachers' conversation and was standing in the kitchen doorway, so he could eavesdrop properly. The glass he'd been about to use for his alka seltzer was too filthy to drink from, but still managed to be useful as a listening aid when pressed against the dividing wall.

"Look Dumbledore," Snape was saying, "I know perfectly well that you're capable of a small degree of wandless magic and all I'm asking is a simple memory charm!"

"Memory charms are notoriously... Could you move out of the way, I think Tad is about to propose." Snape glowered, but obligingly stepped aside to give Dumbledore an unobstructed view of 'All My Children'. Seemingly ignorant of Snape's wrath, Dumbledore continued. "Memory charms are notoriously unreliable without a working wand, Severus. Or do I need to remind you of our erstwhile Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher?"

"The one under the stairs humming 'The Girl From Ipanema' or the one doing things I'd prefer not to think about in the basement?"

"Gilderoy Lockheart."

"Oh. Him."

"You see? A wandless memory charm could turn both you and Miss Granger into gibbering simpletons!"

Snape muttered something under his breath about Lockheart being a gibbering simpleton to begin with, but didn't argue.

"So practice on somebody else first," suggested Draco, strolling around the corner.

"What do you mean?" asked Snape in a voice that suggested he was torn between annoyance that Draco had been eavesdropping on a _very personal subject and relief that there might be a way out of his predicament._

"All you need" Draco told him, "is a person who's not all there to begin with."

Dumbledore and Snape both eyed him up thoughtfully.

"I didn't mean _me!" said Draco, stamping his foot._

***

"I can't take it anymore!" Hermione was frantically telling the cameras in the diary room. "It's the house's fault! Nothing would have happened if I hadn't felt so claustrophobic. Stuck in here together day after day, getting more and more tense, it's no wonder I snapped! And the drink's to blame too! Those margaritas were definitely suspect. I bet there was still a layer of eye of newt stuck to the insides of that blender! Wow, I bet a research paper on the effects of combining eye of newt with tequila would really..." She stopped herself, mid-academic fantasy and resumed her hysteria. "Anyway, that's not important. The point is, I have to get out!"

***

"Boobies. Eighteen points," said Ron. He was turning out to be rather better at rude word scrabble than the regular kind. Draco, Snape and Dumbledore had gone into the kitchen, apparently plotting something, and the boys had the living room to themselves, with the exception of Quildemort, who had stomped in a few minutes ago and was now sat on the couch, deeply engrossed in Saturday morning children's television on Channel Five. Well Quirrell was at any rate, Voldemort appeared to be asleep, certainly he was snoring loudly.

"It's your go Harry."

"I know, I had a really good one lined up for the triple word score and I can't remember what it was."

"So put something else down."

"No, I want to remember the good one. Cheaters shouldn't prosper."

"I wasn't cheating!" Said Ron, indignantly.

"Not you, him!" Harry gestured in the direction of the sofa.

"What, Quirrell?"

"No Voldemort."

"But he's asleep! He's snoring!"

He is not!" Said Harry, vehemently. "He's singing 'The Girl from Ipanema' in Parseltongue!"

Ron listened, but the hissy noises turned to raucous snorts with a suddenness that was rather suspect. He was about to suggest insulting Voldemort to see if they could make him admit he was awake, when his attention was drawn to the window.

"What on earth is Hermione doing?"

Harry followed Ron's gaze to the front gate.

"Oh no! She's trying to escape again. Come on!"

Both the boys abandoned the Scrabble board and ran out the front door towards Hermione. 

Voldemort waited until both the boys had definitely left the room again before opening his eyes. He was unnerved to find an unblinking, demented stare less than an inch away from them.

"Ginny, this is an invasion of my personal space."

"But Tommy! I only feel safe around you!"

Voldemort's obscene reply was forestalled by Ginny being abruptly yanked from the room. Draco had decided that a lasso made of two dressing-gown belts tied together would be much easier than trying to talk Ginny into the kitchen.

***

 "Hermione stop doing that."

ZAP!

"Please Hermione. It can't be that bad."

ZAP!

"Look, you know full well we can't leave the house."

ZAP!

"Stop electrocuting yourself! It's pointless!"

ZAP!

Hermione's hair, which had been pretty space-consuming to start with, was now standing out from her head like a frazzled afro. She had a wild look in her eyes and had opened the front gate, throwing herself towards the street and being repeatedly driven back in a cloud of green sparks.

"Must!"

ZAP!

"Escape!"

ZAP!

"This!"

ZAP!

"House!"

ZAP!

She was thrown back once again and instead of continuing to zap herself, she settled for lying on the lawn in a foetal position, sobbing. After a moment, Ron and Harry picked her up and carried her inside. She was starting to get weird looks from the neighbours.

In the kitchen, Draco and Snape had manhandled Ginny into one of the kitchen chairs and were readying her for Dumbledore's memory spell.

"So you're saying it'll be a weaker version of the normal spell? What's the point of that? She's absent-minded enough already. This way she'll just be bonkers with Alzheimers!"

"No," said Snape patiently. "It'll just wipe some of her most emotionally draining memories. Which actually works out better from our point of view."

"Because if the spell erases her memories of the basilisk, then it means the spell will erase _your wiggiest memory."_

"Exactly Mr Malfoy. Ten points for Slytherin."

"And you won't remember getting drunk and going all Gary Glitter on the mudblood." Draco finished.

"Fifty points from Slytherin," said Snape, trying to stop himself from drowning Draco in the nearby jar of pickled newt eyes.

"OBLIVIATE!" said Dumbledore impressively holding out his hand towards Ginny, who promptly slumped into unconsciousness. "Can I go now? Xena is on."

***

When Dumbledore and Draco returned to the living room, Hermione was lying on the couch with Ron and Harry in frantic attendance.

"Please Hermione, tell us what's wrong."

"Are you both totally bonkers?" Draco asked. "She's all hysterical because she spent last night in an orgiastic frenzy with Snape."

"Don't be stupid, Malfoy," said Ron, witheringly. "That was just a joke. As if Hermione would really have anything to do with Snape!"

"Is that what you think?" Draco smirked. "Because my room's directly above theirs and I distinctly heard her yell out 'Spank me, Daddy! Make me... OOF!"

Hermione had got up from the couch with alarming speed. Before Draco could finish the sentence, he'd been pinned against the wall in the hallway, with Hermione's hands wrapped around his neck, severely impairing his ability to breathe.

"They do not know. They will not know. You will shut up." Hermione's enunciation was worryingly good for a person who was speaking without ungritting their teeth.

"Fine," Draco squeaked. "But you should be nicer to me if you want to know what Snape's planning."

Hermione reluctantly loosened her grip. "Why, what's going on?"

"He's made Dumbledore try out a wandless memory charm on Ginny to see if it's safe to wipe both your memories about last night." When she didn't step away immediately, Draco pressed his advantage. "Probably just as well considering your nympho tendencies. Less than twenty four hours later and you've got me up against a wall. You'd give Freud nightmares, Granger. Are you trying to work your way through the whole of Slytherin house? Because Voldemort's in the living room and he'd be more than happy to… OOF!"

Hermione smiled nastily down at Draco's crumpled from and walked victoriously back into the living room to watch TV.

***

By the time the closing credits of Xena were running, the group in the living room had almost forgotten about Ginny. So there was some surprise when she entered the room with an unusual look of clarity in her eyes.

"Has anyone noticed that this place is disgraceful? And that stench..." Ginny took in the state of the living room, ignoring Hermione, Snape and Dumbledore who were looking at her expectantly. "What this house needs is some structure. I'm surprised I haven't noticed this before."

With those rather ominous words Ginny strode from the room, stepping over the unconscious Draco and up the stairs. What no one dared say to her retreating form was that most of the wreckage in the house had been caused by her psychotic episodes. What was also left unsaid was the fact that the permanent ammonia smell in the house was solely Snape's fault. The room collectively decided that both facts were best left un-addressed for the time being. They were more concerned with how coherent Ginny had seemed, and way it had somehow sent shivers down their spines.

"This is not good," Harry managed.

***

"The Weasley Manifesto?" Harry looked at Ron who was sitting on his bed reading the copy of the document he'd nicked from the Diary Room. Ron gave Harry a blank look from behind the paper, and rolled onto his stomach for more comfortable reading. The pamphlets had arrived out of nowhere, pinned to every door in the house like an extremely warped parody of Luther's doctrine. Upon further reading they found that the manifesto, penned by Ginny Weasley, was a terrifying declaration that had the household describing Ginny as a mixture of Karl Marx's ideology, Charles Manson's charisma, and Anne Robinson's sadism.

The room was silent for a moment while the boys read with a mixture of awe and horror. Ron was the first to break the silence, asking, "Harry, what does she mean 'The history of all hitherto house shares has been the history of class struggles marked by disorder'?"

"I dunno, this is starting to scare me," Harry said, putting the document down. Ron looked into his best friend's eyes and shuddered. "You haven't got to the part where she says she's going to make the basement bathroom part of the normal daily rota."

Harry gaped.

"Where does it say that?"

Ron motioned toward a paragraph on the third page. "Right here... 'The primary objective of house share socialism and the revolutionary proletariat is the abolition of private property, for it is this that keeps them from living up to their full potential. For the better of the house share all property must be made available, be it in the basement or the yard. A standard of living has to be maintained or those suffering the abuses of the former regime will never be relieved.'"

"What else does she say?"

"Alcohol is banned, Sirius and Remus have to share in household responsibilities, records from the diary room have to become public property and the room locked from further use. Harry, we have to get out here."

Seeing the manic look that had entered Ron's eyes, Harry nodded in solemn agreement. They were not able to form a plan, however, because Draco took that opportunity to burst into the room with a smirk on his face.

"Has anyone ever told you that your entire family is terrifying, Weasley? Tell the truth, was your house built on a toxic waste dump or is it just the result of inbreeding?"

"Shut up, Malfoy. We have more important things to do than bicker with you," Harry said with a frown as his friend seethed beside him. "Ginny's become a monster."

Draco shrugged his shoulders in a nonchalant way. "I'd have to agree that there are better things to do right now than to goad Weasley, there are more lucrative matters at hand."

"Lucrative?" Ron managed to sputter through his rage. "You mean you're not planning to run for the border like the rest of us?"

"Let's just say I'm connected," the blonde drawled before grinning at the two confused boys. "I think that living under the rule of your sister is going to work out just fine. Let's just say that I'm not in your 'revolutionary proletariat', Malfoys have a class of their own."

When the Slytherin boy had left the room after that cryptic remark Ron muttered, "Yeah, class of fungus. He's mental."

Harry threw himself back on the bed and glared up at the ceiling. "This is horrible. What the hell is a proletariat?"

"The poorest class of working people. If I'm not mistaken, Ginny's read the Communist Manifesto," Hermione offered from the doorway through which Draco had just left.

"I didn't think Ginny had been in a fit state of mind to read a cereal box for a very long time, " Harry admitted.

Ron looked thoughtful.

"She got awful megalomaniacal after the diary thing. The whole summer after our second year she read a lot of thick books and took notes. Hermione, what's a Communist?"

"Is the entire wizarding world as dense as you, Ron?" With a sigh Hermione smoothed her frazzled hair. "Let's just say your sister is becoming a dictator in the grand tradition of Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin."

Harry groaned, and sat up looking determined. "We have to escape, but how?"

"There is no escape Harry," Hermione whispered with a haunted look in her eyes. "We're all going to die here."

Then, with a sob, Hermione ran from the room leaving the two boys together in worried silence. "I think I miss Ginny's psychotic episodes already. Hermione used to be the voice of reason, and now she's the nutter."

Ron nodded in agreement. "We're going to have to face our fears and go talk to Ginny. She has to be stopped before she destroys the protective wall between us and the basement."

Suddenly from downstairs there was loud bang followed by a shout that sounded distinctively like, "The next person to blow that bloody dog whistle is getting it jammed where the sun doesn't shine!"

"I think it's too late," Harry moaned as the two made haste for the ground floor to face their fears.

***

Sirius Black was not a happy man. His ears were ringing and every pore in his body was begging him to take hold of the petite redhead and shake her senseless. She'd been harmless when senseless. It was this new return to her senses that was the problem. She'd stormed into the basement, demanded its surrender and then promptly reclaimed the space as part of the house for everyone to use. To add insult to injury, she'd resorted to using a dog whistle to drive him out of bed to help cook lunch. 

It would be so easy to just grab her by the whistle hanging around her neck; going back to Azkaban was preferable to being in the fold of the house. Not that he thought he'd get locked up for her murder, he'd be given a medal. That'd clear his name for sure, public service. So lost in this thought, he merely grunted a hello to his godson when Harry entered the room before focusing back on the cooking.

"It smells good down here," Ron said in awe as he trailed in after Harry. When his eyes fell on Sirius, he let out a small whimper and paled. "I think I'm going to throw up."

Harry shot Ron a look and whispered, "Just don't think about the basement, Ron. Think about meals that don't contain eye of newt."

"They never will again," Ginny said matter-of-factly, without looking up from her seat at the kitchen table. "It's unhealthy to have a reliance on something we wouldn't be able to procure for ourselves during situations like war."

"Did she say war?" Ron muttered, before he and Harry took seats across the table from the youngest Weasley.

"We have to be self-sufficient, don't you two have any pride?" Ginny eyed them both suspiciously before looking back down at her clipboard and muttering "though war wouldn't be an option unless I could set up some satellite house shares..."

Clearing her throat, Ginny narrowed her eyes and looked at the boys. "We all have to pull our weight for this house share to succeed and become a super power. Ron, you are assigned the task of splicing the cable so we get all the channels. I need the local access network to keep up on house share politics."

"Erm, Ginny. Isn't splicing cable illegal?" Harry winced under the glare she gave him.

"What's theirs is ours, what's ours is ours." Ginny waved her hand dismissively. "Ron, I know you've not had much experience fixing televisions but I'm sure you can pick it up as you go along. Now go, Harry's assignment is strictly on a need to know basis."

"But I thought everything was public domain," Ron argued as he stood up.

Ginny slammed her fist on the table, then smiled, creepily. "It is, unless I say it isn't. Dimissed!"

When Ron had left the room and his cursing was out of earshot, Ginny smiled at Harry and ignored Sirius who was opening and slamming cabinets like a child. "You see Harry, we have a traitor in our midst."

Harry laughed.

"Who, Draco?"

"How did you know?" Ginny inclined an eyebrow and made a mark on her clipboard. "You're not above suspicion yourself, you know. Are you faithful to Mother House Share?"

Trying not to laugh, Harry nodded. Ginny accepted this and went on.

"If you know anything of activities that go against my policies, you will inform me correct? Good. You are dismissed to help Dumbledore in intelligence gathering."

From his seat at the table, Harry could clearly see that Dumbledore was currently flipping between 'Home and Away' and 'Real World'. Not wanting to anger Ginny, or even have to speak to her anymore, he stood up to leave but Ginny stood up as well.

"You're fighting the good fight, comrade." Hugging him, the mini-dictator nodded solemnly. Then he ran for his life. Sitting back down, Ginny smiled and made another mark on her clipboard. Her regime was off to a good start.

At the stove Sirius started tapping a spatula against the counter top, humming 'Deutschland Deutschland Uber Alles' under his breath

***

After spending an hour or so watching TV with Dumbledore, Harry began to feel a little guilty about his promise to keep an eye on Draco and decided to see if he could find him. He eventually tracked him down in the diary room, which appeared to have been refurbished; it now looked like a very small, very cramped, Seventies disco. Draco was inside, drinking with Juan and Rico, the window repairmen.

"What on earth is going on in here?"

"The first rule of business, Potter. 'Where there's a demand, supply it.' Fuhrer Weasley seems to have forgotten that, although, given her family, I suppose it's doubtful that she knew it in the first place. Anyway, she's prohibited alcohol, so there's a demand for speakeasies. Which I'm supplying."

Harry boggled a little at this explanation.

"But Juan and Rico aren't trapped here. They could just walk down the road to the offie."

"Well of course!" said Draco. "Where did you think we got the alcohol?"

Harry rolled his eyes and walked back downstairs. He'd have to warn Ginny of course, but he thought that the inevitable bitchfight could safely wait until after lunch. He entered the living room in time to see Dumbledore yelling "OBLIVIATE!" in Hermione's face. He was about to interfere, but decided that since Hermione now seemed happier than she had all morning, he'd just sit and watch 'The Tribe' instead.

***

Hermione felt better, although now she came to think of it, she couldn't put her finger on just what had been bothering her. Oh yes! Dumbledore had erased one of her memories. That would explain the gap. She frowned a little, wondering what had been so bad that she'd asked to have it pulled from her head, then decided that there were more important matters afoot and she could pick at the edges of the missing memory later. She could hear disco music from upstairs and was about to go up and see what was happening, when the table by the window caught her eye. There was something about the Scrabble board that was setting off warning signals in the gap in her mind. She picked it up decisively and carried it into the kitchen, then tore up the board and fed the pieces into the waste disposal.

There. Much better.

***

Snape swept from the house and into the yard, a dark scowl fixed on his face. "There's no use hiding, I know you're out there Quirrell. I once told you how dangerous I could be as an enemy, show yourself!"

His demands went unheeded, and repressing the urge to stamp his foot the ornery Potions master turned his anger on Hagrid who stood nearby. "Have you seen that atrocity, Quildemort? There is something urgent I need to discuss with him."

The half-giant looked thoughtful for a moment, before looking around the tiny yard. "He ain't here, Professor. Little Ginny had him helping me pick glass out of the garden to fix to the walls, but that were hours ago."

Frowning, Snape turned on his heel to go back into the house as Hagrid called, "Have yer checked the basement?"

His steps faltered and the ever-composed Severus Snape almost tripped into the house. Luckily there was no one around to notice, with the entire household on various errands for the Weasley brat. From the kitchen the unmistakable sound of Sirius cursing, tipped him off that the basement was missing at least one of its deterrents. 

Muttering, "He better be down there", Snape slowly walked down the steps to the horror that was known as the basement. Luckily he didn't have to go far, he found Quildemort in the bathroom by the bottom of the stairs. Quirrell had yellow gloves on and was scrubbing the basin and taps, the toilet and the tub looked as though they had received the same treatment earlier. The room fairly sparkled, a huge contrast to the horrors of the rest of the basement.

From the back of Quirrell's head, Voldemort was smirking. "What brings you down here, Severus? Turning your back on another leader?"

"Enough," Snape hissed, his whole face contorting with rage. "I know that you're behind this somehow. There is NO way that girl decided to research muggle political theory on her own."

Voldemort giggled, a girlie sound that made Snape's frown deepen.

"You brought this situation upon yourself. This side of Ginny Weasley was unfortunately fostered by my sixteen year old self. After I abandoned her, she was left to her own devices and found an outlet for the political instincts I'd stirred in Communist writings. You'd never suspect."

"Then how is this my fault?" Snape yelled, losing his patience.

"Considering our situation it was best to leave the girl as the lunatic she was. When the memory of her fear was erased, it left her with nothing from her previous conversations with me, but her desire to take over the world. Since her current world only reaches as far as the walls of this house you're bearing the brunt of it and serve you right, too!" Smiling pleasantly, he added an admonishment. "Potions-position indeed! Really, Severus. She's a student!"

Snape inclined an eyebrow.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

Turning around Snape stalked up the stairs, leaving Voldemort very amused. "I hope he doesn't pass that Weasley girl on the way up. I haven't even told her my plan for exploiting her workers, yet."

"Like m-me?" Quirrell asked gloomily.

"Don't be ridiculous," Voldemort told him. "I don't exploit you. Now stop blithering and finish cleaning the toilet!"

***

 "What on earth's going on in there?"

The door to the diary room slid open on a chain and Draco's face appeared in the gap.

"What's the password?"

Hermione bit back a comment comparing Draco to the Fat Lady and tried to guess what Draco would have chosen as password.

"Lipstick?"

The door swung open and Hermione smirked. Draco was so predictable.

"I'm not sure I should be letting you have anything to drink, Granger. You might try to ravage me."

"Keep dreaming, Malfoy. The only person who'd have less of a chance with me is Snape."

Draco gave her a weird look, but didn't say anything, so she sat down beside Rico and Juan. They were beginning to see first hand why the windows got broken so often. If they had to live with this lot, they'd jump out of windows too.

***

Eventually, Ginny arrived at the door of the diary room to break up the speakeasy. When Draco had opened it on the chain and asked her for the password, she'd begun a tirade about how bourgeois self-interest was the reason for the collapse of co-operative societies and he was just encouraging things by holding a speakeasy in there.

Draco countered by swearing on his sisters life that it wasn't a speakeasy at all. They were deeply engrossed in bible study.

"You haven't got a sister!" Retorted Ginny. "And religion is the opiate of the masses!"

This would have sounded more impressive if she hadn't been wearing a clip on moustache. Draco mentioned this and got a sour look from Ginny.

"All the world's most innovative leaders have had moustaches," she told him.

"Yeah," said Hermione, sotto voce. "Hitler, Stalin, Saddam Hussein..."

"So you're walking around in a plastic moustache quoting dead Russians? Crazy-you and sane-you have a lot in common." Draco told her.

"I'll have you know I'm very much in touch with reality!"

"Not the reality we're using," said Hermione, firmly. "Yours is a reality nobody's really understood since Stalin."

They were interrupted by Rico's voice coming from the back of the mini-speakeasy. "Meester Draco, can we go now? We have more work to do."

"You'll stay there until you're told to move!" Draco shouted, annoyed at being interrupted mid-bicker. Ginny took exception to this.

"OPPRESSIVE BOURGEOIS PIG! LOOK, ARE YOU GOING TO OPEN THIS DOOR?"

"The door? No." Draco smirked evilly. "But we've got booze in here, so if you'll just fetch us a Scrabble board, Hermione's legs may be...OOF!"

"No! No!" Ginny shouted at them. "It's in the best interests of the revolution to present a united front against our enemies!"

***

From behind the TV all that could be seen of Ron was his ass up in the air, or alternately the top of his shiny, orange helmet. Dumbledore had fallen asleep leaving Ron time to splice the cable as ordered. The problem was that Ron barely knew how to turn a television on, let alone what really made one work. A good ten minutes of fiddling with the plug and the wall socket had taught him that the cable had nothing to do with electricity. It had also taught him, after repeated shocks, that electricity was not his friend.

"Ron, what exactly are you trying to do?" Even from behind the television set Ron could sense the amusement in Lupin's voice.

"I'm trying to dig a tunnel out of this place. What does it look like I'm doing? My freaky sister is making me splice cable."

The couch creaked as his former professor sat down to regard Ron's failure. "Did you ask Hermione how it worked, she's muggle-born, right?"

Ron grunted.

"She's hiding from Snape somewhere, not that I blame her."

Lupin laughed and stared at the blank television screen. "I'd be hiding if I'd drunkenly had sex with Professor Snape, too."

"You mean Draco was telling the truth?" Ron looked over the television set speculatively. "How do you know?"

"We could hear Hermione's very vocal assessments of the situation," Sirius called from the kitchen, causing Remus to laugh again. "Something like 'Ooh, I like bad boys', and so on."

Ducking back behind the television Ron blushed for Hermione. On the motion down his noticed a black wire that went into the back of the television set from the floor. "Professor Lupin, does cable come from the floor?"

"I'm not sure. It's going to obviously be one of the wires that doesn't plug into the wall."

"Obviously," Ron muttered, rolling his eyes. Coming up from the floor was a wire that had been unplugged. Picking it up he put it into an empty space in the TV. Instantly screaming filled the room.

"I THINK IT'S IN THE BEST INTERESTS OF THE REVOLUTION THAT I KICK HIS ASS!"

"Ron," Lupin ventured, the amused tone back in his voice. "I think you might want to look at this. You, too Sirius."

Coming around the TV to sit on the couch beside the older man, Ron couldn't stop himself from gaping. Somehow he'd managed to connect to the camera in the diary room, which now looked like the bastard child of a John Travolta movie and the Jerry Springer show. Dim lighting barely filtered through the smoky atmosphere of the tiny room, and somehow Draco, Hermione and the two window repairmen were all squashed in with small round tables and various bottles of alcohol. Currently Hermione had her hands around Draco's throat and was beating his head against the nearest wall.

"Help!" Draco managed to gurgle to the two repairmen who ignored him and made hasty exits, muttering about not being paid enough for this. Sirius, who was watching the scene on the television from the doorway to the kitchen was laughing hysterically, clutching his stomach.

"Ron, why does your sister have a moustache?" 

Ginny who had entered the diary room after Rico and Juan had unlocked the door was still sporting the daring black moustache in the grand tradition of sketchy leaders. She was now also wearing a small military hat with a red star on the front. Seeing this, Ron buried his face in his hands. "Oh no."

Ginny, who made no move to actually involve herself in the scuffle, stood with her hands on her hips, shouting, "Fighting amongst yourselves is a violation of the manifesto! Treason, borscht for brains! I demand you stop, as leader of the free world!"

What happened next could have been an accident or calculated. Either way Hermione abruptly let go of Draco and dodged to the left, while he struck out hitting Ginny in the face. Or more specifically, in the plastic moustache which became lodged up her nose. Chaos ensued.

Down in the living room, it was generally decided that it would be best if they pretended that they had never seen it. Sirius went back into the kitchen, chuckling, and Lupin followed with a slight smile on his normally serious features. Ron went back behind the television and pulled the plug out, closing the connection with the diary room. He still hadn't managed to splice the cable and giving it one last shot, he took the plug that ran from the floor and plugged it into the wall socket.

ZAP!

No, electricity was not his friend.

***

By the time Ginny had removed the moustache from her nose and recovered from the fainting fit brought on by extreme blood loss, the household had mostly returned to normal. Sirius and Lupin had both retreated to the basement, after persuading the window repairmen to take the dog whistle out of the house with them. There had been some wistful sighs at the loss of the house's best cook, but there were enough leftovers from the truly spectacular lunch Sirius had prepared, that nobody was forced to consume the newt-eye soup that Snape had made for dinner.

When Ginny tottered down the stairs that evening, Harry, Ron, Draco and Hermione were settling down in the living room for the Channel Five Bond movie marathon, consisting, in the true Channel Five tradition, solely of the movies which were either unauthorised or completely crap. The others eyed her mistrustfully. 

"We're not taking any more orders from you, Ginny," Harry said, when he saw her sidle into the room.

"I'm not going to give any," said Ginny quietly.

"Good. You really have to get these delusions of yours under control."

"I'm trying," she sniffled. "I sent away for a book to help, but I think the basilisk ate it."

Ron beamed. The basilisk hallucinations were much easier to deal with than the attempts at world conquest.

"That's okay, Gin. Wanna watch crap TV with us?"

"Yes, please."

She walked over to the couch and sat down beside her brother, who gave her a big hug. Draco got up, making loud barfing noises.

"Heartwarming as this is, I don't think my stomach can take it. Granger, can I talk to you in the kitchen?"

Hermione shrugged and followed Draco out the room. From the hallway, she could just hear Harry saying 'Hang on, would this be a big hardback book with a dark green cover? That arrived days ago, but it was addressed to Snape so I hid it to piss him off.'

***

When she entered the kitchen, Hermione's nose was instantly assaulted by the sour smell of the abandoned newt-eye soup. As much as it pained her to admit it, there had been advantages to Ginny's brief reign of terror. Decent food for one thing, and the dishes had all been washed and put away.

"Interesting that Weasel Junior believes in snakes again. The others may be too thick to work it out, but I know what that means."

Hermione scowled at him. 

"I don't know what you mean!"

"Come off it, Granger! You gave yourself away, when you started hitting me earlier. Your spell's obviously worn off too."

"No it hasn't! I mean... erm... what spell?"

Draco smirked.

"Nice try. The rest of the house may buy it, but I know the truth. You remember shagging Snape. Now, about the terms of the blackmail...OOF!"

"Tell anybody and I'll finish the job I started on your face."

Draco winced, but seemed to accept this.

"Fine, but I figured you'd be doing the same. Blackmailing Snape for better Potions grades or something."

"I can earn good grades by own hard work. Besides, you don't have to share a room with him," said Hermione, heatedly.

"I used to," Draco reminded her, "but have it your way. No more talking about your vivid memories of Snape's one eyed trouser snake?"

"SNAKE!" Ginny burst in from the hallway, where she'd apparently been listening and made a run for the kitchen cupboard. She flung the door open, only to have a pair of very angry owls burst out and fly at her face in a formation more commonly seen in Hitchcock's 'The Birds.'

She collapsed in a heap on the floor sobbing. Ron came chasing in after his sister, heard her mumbling "Hitchcock! Hitchcock!" under her breath and promptly threw himself out of the kitchen window.

Hermione looked around and shrugged. Rabid denial and general background level craziness, while not exactly what she wanted from life, was a vast improvement on earlier. She could deal.

***

In the cupboard under the stairs, Voldemort grumbled to himself. Someday he would have a protégé worthy of his teaching. He would train somebody up in his image and become immortal, holding the world to ransom.

Of course, he'd have to get his own body back and escape from this sodding house first.

Want to read the Weasley Manifesto?  
Why not visit the site?  
http://www30.brinkster.com/bunkbeds/


	5. Bonded!

_This fic is dedicated to Lady Alyssa and Random Flatmate/Dent who wrote the awesome 'Bagenders' and gave us permission to rip off some of their work in this fic._  
  
  
****

Episode Five: The Name's Isk, Basil Isk

Breakfast was a non-meal seeing as it was a Sunday. The housemates were forced to fend for themselves if they bothered to wake up at all. In their pajamas Draco, Ron, Harry, Hermione and Ginny were all squished onto the couch watching the Channel 5-movie marathon that had started at midnight. Entitled "The Bonds that Only WE Love" it was a horrifying montage of Timothy Dalton and George Lazenby movies.

The teens were soon than zombies enraptured by the spy life; Quildemort had been terrified at the sight of the glassy eyed beings on the couch when he'd been unfortunate enough to stumble out of the cupboard under the stairs. Calling it a sixth sense he'd sensed the trouble that was to come and made haste to latch himself into the for once deserted bathroom. This caused problems later in the day when he refused to come out, but promises that they'd order out pizza with whatever he'd like as a topping eventually got him out around dinner time.

In the corner of the living room Dumbledore slept in his hammock with the Soap Opera guide tented over his face. As the TV programming switched from the ending credits of "License to Kill" on to "Man of Boundless Emotional Depth: The Timothy Dalton story", the young viewers exchanged glances and then grinning to themselves darted for their rooms.

Lifting the Soap Opera guide off of his face, Dumbledore fished under his hammock until he came up with the TV remote. Changing the programming back to the 24-Hour Soap Opera Network, he smiled contentedly to himself and settled in for a restful Sunday.

*****

Snape awoke when the cave-like darkness of the room he shared with Hermione was broken as the door swung open and then was snapped shut. The darkness wouldn't not reign for long, as Hermione threw herself into the tiny closet and flicked on the light within. Merely rolling over, Snape pulled his black comforter up over his head and curled into a fetal position. He wasn't able to fall back asleep, however, due to the horrible noise that soon filled the room.

Peeking out from under the blanket, despite the hideous case of bed hair he always woke up with, he barked, "What is that noise, it could wake the dead!"

Instantly he wished he hadn't spoken or looked because what the noise was became glaringly apparent when his gaze fell to his blushing roommate. "Gods girl, are you trying to give me a... heart attack?" He asked, only just stopping himself from saying stroke.

Straightening up, Hermione gave up on smoothing the skin-tight, black vinyl trousers and had the decency to blush an even deeper red color. "I didn't mean to wake you, honestly."

Snape scowled.

"Is it too much to hope that you are not going to leave the room in those? And if you are, perchance you explain yourself?"

Turning her back to him, Hermione said nothing but shut herself back in the closet. Other than a few bumps against the wall and some muttered swearing, the room went back to silence. Snape was too curious to sleep now and waited, looking at the ceiling, for her to emerge. 

"Shit!" Her exclamation was out of character, as she stuck her head out of the closet and waved a piece of tattered black fabric at him. "How the hell did this happen to my bra?"

Snape looked at her levelly, and her eyes went round.

"Double SHIT!" Clutching a shirt and another bra to her exposed front she burst out of the closet, shooting him a horrified look under a crimson blush. She barely had time to pick up a small makeup bag before she ran from the room.

On the top bunk Snape stifled a malicious smile. From the look she'd given him, she only too well remembered how her undergarments had gotten that way. Unfortunately he wasn't able to get that particular mental image out of his head for the rest of the day and was barely seen by the other members of the household and not at all by Hermione.

*****

"You're really going to wear that dress?" Draco asked with a slight edge to his voice.

Ginny nodded and adjusted the bodice so that it fit her curves while Draco pouted at her in the mirror. "But you're just going to have a psychotic episode and ruin it. You're a Weasley you should have more care for your clothing. You never know if you'll have any tomorrow. You might have to wear _Ron_'s clothes if you ruin that."

Glaring at the blonde haired boy, Ginny ran a comb through her hair and walked from the room leaving Draco to his own devices. His pout became a scowl as he jerked open the wardrobe door and surveyed his choices for an outfit. Choosing a rather imposing white suit that put him in mind of South American drug dealers, he sat at Ginny's makeup table and winked at his reflection.

"Draco Malfoy, you're looking rather attractive this afternoon."

Flashing himself another grin he noticed a dark green book in the mirror and picked it up. 'It's All In Your Head: Making Delusions Your Friends' by Gilderoy Lockheart. Come to think of it Ginny had been on an unusually even keel all morning and Draco now got the distinct impression that this book had something to do with it. Turning it over he snorted at the back page blurb: "Do you suffer from delusions and psychotic episodes? Do these episodes put you at odds with everyone around you? Well with this book you can learn how to make these delusions your friends!"

"As long as she doesn't go all Stalin again," he muttered as he tossed the book back where he had found it.

Striding out into the hallway, he smiled at the muffled sounds of arguing coming from Potter and Weasley's room. Taking the stairs down two at a time, he smirked as an incredibly evil idea dawned on him. The hours of spy movies they'd watched had put certain ideas in their heads as to how they could get their own way without the use of their wands and Draco rather fancied himself as a Bond villain.

Coming to the bathroom door he smiled to himself and said, "Draco Malfoy you're not only attractive, but a born genius."

Knocking on the locked bathroom door, he waited for a response that didn't come. Frowning he yelled, "How long are you going to be in there?"

"For a while," Quirrell's voice yelled back. "Use the bathroom in the basement!"

Draco shuddered and felt suddenly ill, there was no way he could explain his aversion to the downstairs bathroom logically. Then it came to him. "I need to use the mirror, there is no mirror down there." Unless you count the one on the ceiling, he added silently. 

This however didn't get a response. Kicking the door, he jiggled the handle impatiently.  He managed to say, "You've been in there since this morning!" before his speech degenerated to some truly spectacular cursing.

Quildemort, who showed no signs of emerging, turned on the shower. When this failed to tune out the noise, two voices began to belt out the opening verses to Bette Midler's "Wind Beneath My Wings". Forced to admit defeat, Draco kicked the door one last time and turned, running straight into Hermione who lost her balance and brought not only herself but Draco down into a pile on the ground. 

Grunting, Draco lifted himself up on his arms and looked down at the girl he had pinned and her attire. Looking at her exposed midriff and tight trousers he grinned cheekily, and put on a seductive look that would have made Sean Connery proud. "Do you expect me to talk?"

"No, Mr. Malfoy. I expect you to GET OFF!" Hermione attempted in vain to dislodge the boy and knee him in the groin at the same time. However her trousers would not allow it and all she managed to do was lodge her knickers up her bum and twist her shirt up. Draco, seeing the looks of red rage that was coming over the normally sane girl, got off of her and stood up.

"Bond girls are usually a lot more accommodating and polite to their bad guys." Smoothing his jacket, Draco crossed his arms over his chest. "Granger, perhaps you should have gone for the Moneypenny role. You know, adoring and biting to Bond and rarely seen."

Laying flat on her back, she glared at him. "Help me up, Malfoy."

Draco laughed.

"Can't get up? Trousers too tight?" 

Giving into hysterical laughter, Draco's mirth was short lived as Hermione's leg came up and caught him about the knee and brought him back down to the floor. For a moment the two lay sprawled in the hallway. When Hermione spoke, her words were laced with acid. "No, the trousers are fine. I was just going to have to get revenge if you didn't."

Pulling herself to her feet, Hermione fixed her shirt and vainly tried to rid herself of the wedgie, before going down the stairs. Draco lay stunned on the carpet. In the bathroom the shower went off, and first Quirrell then Voldemort's face peeked out through the slightly open door. Abruptly the door closed behind them, and the shower started again and they resumed their song at the long notes of "HEEEROOO!"

*****

"The name's Potter, Harry Potter." Grinning wickedly at his reflection, Harry was infinitely glad that his mirror wasn't a wizarding mirror. If it had been, it would have either laughed itself silly or at the very least told him how horrible his hair looked and then asked him about the faint biro marks that ringed his face.  Adjusting his suit, he turned to Ron who was busy glaring down at his trousers. The trousers in question were nice, charcoal gray and pressed. The problem was that they had been each Charlie's, Percy's and Fred's in turn and were several inches too short. The socks he was wearing, which were the only ones he could find, were bright orange like his helmet and had evil alien faces on them.

"It's a losing battle, Ron," Harry said to his best friend when they stood next to each other in the mirror.

"How come a git like Malfoy can pull off being both Bond and a baddie?" Ron grunted as he tried in vain to pull the trousers down on his hips to compensate. Unfortunately that only bared lime green boxer shorts with toads on.  

Harry thought about this for a moment before cracking up. "He could probably pull off being a Bond girl as well!"

There was no time to dwell on that thought, much to Ron's delight, as Ginny burst into the room holding the skirt of her ball gown up around her thighs. Panting she waited with the door open for several minutes before pushing it closed and dropping to the floor to sit cross legged. After catching her breath she managed to say, "We know what Malfoy's evil plan is."

Harry and Ron exchanged looks.

"We?"

Ginny nodded solemnly and motioned to the empty space beside her. "Yeah, me and Basil got it out of Hermione who had Draco in a sleeper hold."

"Hermione had Draco in a sleeper hold," Harry asked with glee as Ron said, "Who's Basil?"

Ginny rolled her eyes. "The basilisk, you dummy!"

"Um... Ginny. There is no basilisk there." Harry motioned to the space 'Basil' was supposed to occupy.

"He's obviously invisible, that's why you can't see him.... Basil you're so funny. He says that you'd be in danger if you could see him, because of his eyes' magical powers."

Ron coughed, trying not to laugh as Harry looked thoughtful. " I'm a parseltongue, I'd be able to hear him if there was a snake."

"Not necessarily. I can hear him and I'm not a parseltongue." Ginny narrowed her eyes in challenge.

"You'd admit that, being a snake, he'd understand me though?" 

Ginny nodded.

"I can prove that there is no snake then. SSSssssSSSSssss!"

Ginny and Ron both looked at him like he'd grown two heads. Glaring outright at him, Ginny shrugged her shoulders. "What did that prove?"

Harry smile triumphantly. "See, any real snake, if I'd said that about his mom, he'd have had something to say about it!"

Ginny looked at 'Basil', frowned and then stood up and walked over to Harry who was grinning. Drawing back her fist the youngest Weasley punched The Boy Who Lived square in the eye before storming to the door and flinging it open. "In case you were wondering, Ron, SINCE BASIL AND I ARE NO LONGER SPEAKING TO HARRY, Draco is going to take Channel 5 off the TV so all we get is the Soap Opera Network. And if you don't give in to his demands he's going to add the Religious Home Shopping Network in its place."

With that she walked out and slammed the door behind her. Ron laughed weakly as Harry moved back to the mirror to watch his eye purple and swell. Looking down at his socks, Ron mused, "That's pure evil. Taking Channel 5 off would have been a favor... but the religious home shopping nun is so scary."

Harry poked his bruise, then winced again, thankful no wizarding mirror was witnessing this. Turning back to Ron, he nodded in agreement. "Aunt Petunia always watched that in the kitchen when I was making dinner. She bought all sorts of religious icons that she used to store in my cupboard. It was like in 'Carrie'! Do you know how scary it is sleeping with figures of Moses and Jesus staring at you?"

"Is it scarier than living with Ginny?"

Harry shook his head in defeat. "No, you win."

"So what's our course of action?" Ron asked as he looked absently at the new glass in their window.

"We need to attack, you never give in to terrorists", Harry said solemnly. "I'm going to go down to the kitchen and set up an arsenal by using last nights soup to fill water bombs."

Ron made a disgusted face.

"So that leaves you as the action man, Ron. Good luck."

Harry walked purposefully out of the room leaving Ron to his thoughts. He was the action man, he thought with a large grin. Tightening the chin-strap of his helmet, he took a breath and did what came naturally. He threw himself out of the window.

Ron landed on the balls of his feet, despite the drop from the third floor window. Without even looking at the almost shocked resident of the garden, he tossed himself to his left, enacting a precise combat roll. The roll was impressive and spanned the entire length of the house, to the lone shrub whish Ron promptly used as shelter. Crouching there he dusted off his suit and pushed broken glass off his orange helmet before cocking an imaginary gun and waiting for a signal that he would give himself once he caught his breath.

When that time came he darted into the house leaving Hagrid alone with his destroyed rows of flowers.

*****

"I don't know what's wrong with everyone in this house," Ginny said solemnly to the camera in the diary room. Putting her arm out as though holding something, her eyes narrowed. "Harry's lucky all I did was blacken his eyes, he acts so superior, like I'm crazy or something. Ron, too, and he's my brother!"

Looking at the empty space next to her she nodded a few times and a smile brightened her face. "I agree with Basil. I think that all those encounters with Voldemort must have turned Harry a bit odd."

*****

Hanging up the phone Draco grinned at Hermione who was propped up against the arm of the couch since her trousers wouldn't allow her to sit. "If I don't call them within the hour, they can say goodbye to channel 5 and hello to Sister Bridgett and her line of cheap church paraphernalia."

"That is so terrifying," Hermione whispered, half in awe half disgusted that he'd resign himself to that fate just to prove how evil he was. Seeing as though he was the son of a Death Eater she could almost excuse his evil but she had a sinking suspicion he hadn't thought far enough ahead to realize he'd be forced to admire tacky crucifixes and bottles of holy water. Yet seeing as though he hadn't consulted her on his plan, despite her being smarter than him, she kept this knowledge to herself. She rarely watched Channel Five anyway, last night's marathon notwithstanding.

Setting a novelty egg-timer on the coffee table, Draco took a seat on the couch. On the other side of the room Dumbledore was muttering about Adam Chandler Jr., ramblings that were ignored by the younger occupants of the room. Turning to Draco, Hermione sighed. "So now we wait for their move."

"We wait for triumph." Draco got an eerie gleam in his eye as he watched the egg timer tick away the seconds.

"That was pretty corny," Hermione chastised as she watched the supposed baddie stare at an egg timer. "And you look ridiculous."

Draco glared at her. 

"As if you don't? What's your Bond-girl name, Poore D'Intayapants?"

Hermione scowled and tried to smack him, but he scooted over on the couch. "How about Hotte Forslytherins..."

"That's it!" Hermione lunged across the couch, grasping Draco's throat in her hands. Bound as tightly as she was by the incredibly tight vinyl trousers, it was hard for her to pull herself back up and in the confusion they never noticed Ginny, closely followed by Harry, darting into the kitchen.

Helping Hermione off of him, Draco rubbed at his throat and fixed his mussed hair. "Whoa there killa. Granger, you've got some anger problems."

"I do not!"

Draco grinned and scooted further away from her. "You need to relax and I'm sure Snape'd help… AHHHCK!"

He hadn't scooted far enough away.

*****

Ginny hooked the sides of the stretchy black fabric to either side of the kitchen doorframe. Pulling on the middle a few times, she let it snap back and smiled. "Slingshot's made, Basil."

"Give it up and talk to me already. You know I can hear you," Harry whined from the kitchen sink where he was attempting the near impossibly task of filling water bombs with left over soup from dinner the previous evening. Since Snape had once again prepared the meal, there were strange lumps in the soup that indicated one thing: eye of newt. Finally filling the second bomb in an hour, Harry placed it in the clean cooking cauldron on the counter and vowed again to destroy the slimy eyes before they left the kitchen. The whole house, minus Snape, would rejoice.

Behind him the refrigerator door opened, signalling that Ginny had moved and was pouring herself a drink. She was still talking to the imaginary basilisk, which infuriated Harry, but at least gave an indication as to her mental state. "Basil, I told you already. He said that if his demands aren't met he's going to sabotage the TV."

There was a pause.

"To tell you the truth I don't know what his demands are either. Someone should ask him."

Since the only other someone in the room was Harry, he guessed he was elected and moved to the doorway. Peering through he could make out Hermione propped against the edge of the couch, Dumbledore doing a crossword in the back of the TV book, and Draco leaning over the coffee table looking at a novelty egg timer shaped like Daffy Duck. Somehow none of this bothered him and he shouted, "Oi! Malfoy, what are your demands?"

The blonde boy looked at Hermione but didn't answer him. Harry assumed they were speaking even though he couldn't hear them, but the way Draco kept motioning with his arms and Hermione periodically lunged at him suggested some sort of interaction. 

It was several moments before Draco responded with, "We want first dibs on the bathroom in the morning and permission to play Peg Potter without you retaliating."

Harry glared at the back of Draco's head, but was distracted by the door to the backyard creeping open and Ron crawling in on his stomach, covered in flower petals and dirt and looking rather like he'd just crawled out of a swamp. Hooking his foot around the door for the cupboard under the stairs, he did a rather messy combat roll and he used that as cover.  Luckily no one in the living room was paying much attention to the racket he was making, or the dirt trail he left behind. For some reason Harry had the feeling that none of them were really cut out to be spies.

"You only have thirty minutes left, Potter," Draco called from the living room, snapping Harry back to the twisted reality he lived in.

"That's all the time in the world, Malfoy," he responded loftily, as he pulled the cauldron toward the sling shot in the doorway. Putting a filled water bomb in the center of the fabric, he pulled back and waited. "Any last words before I knock the living daylights out of you, Mr. Malfoy?"

Turning his head and seeing the danger he was in from the contents of the bomb, he stood up and pulled Hermione in front of him. As if in slow motion Harry let go of the sling shot.... and Ron jumped up from his hiding place and lunged at Hermione to get her out of the way. The first bomb hit Ron square in the stomach and he went down, a look of anguish on his face at the smell that filled the room, and landed on top of Hermione.

"Nice try, Potter," Draco drawled, brushing some imaginary lint off of his suit. 'But I think your time just divided, fifteen minutes."

Fiddling with the egg timer in an attempt to reset it, he ducked out of sight and away from any possibly water bombs. Harry cursed, then laughed as he heard Ron shriek, "I'M TRYING TO GET OFF, BUT THAT BOMB MADE YOUR TROUSERS ALL STICKY."

The eye of newt and other unnamed ingredients in the soup had reacted, chemically, to the vinyl and the two on the floor found themselves bonded together. No matter how they struggled, neither could break free or get to their feet. Malfoy, who was sitting on the floor in front of the couch clutching Daffy Duck was laughing himself into hysterics.

"Apparently Weasley can't 'get off' even when on top of a girl." His laughter grew louder as the two enraged Gryffindors tried wriggling across the floor in order to get close enough to kill him. Even Dumbledore, a neutral third party in all of this, was amused by the proceedings on the floor since they didn't block the television.  Soon they digressed into bumping into the coffee table, the couch, each other as they grunted and hefted trying to remove themselves from the disgusting situation.

No one noticed Snape on the stairs trying to escape Quildemort's bathroom singing, which could he heard all through the second floor. Frozen at the bottom of the stairs all he could see through wide eyes was Hermione's flushed face, Ron wriggling up and down on top of her and Draco watching them with an amused smirk. Blindly he reached for the first door in sight and threw himself through it, nausea getting the better of him. What he didn't know until it was too late was that he'd just entered the basement.

The spy/counter spy activity disintegrated as Hermione began to try and pull herself out of her trousers to get away from Ron. Draco, wishing he had a video recorder, was forced to call a truce with Harry so the two of them could laugh hysterically together. Ginny had taken the task of dismantling the sling shot and disposing of the other water bomb, all the while telling Basil that he couldn't go watch the circus in the living room.

By the time she joined the throng in the living room Snape had appeared up out of the basement, blinking at the light and hugging himself defensively. Walking further into the room, he started to say something to Dumbledore but stopped himself and merely sat on the edge of the couch and stared dumbly into space.

Dumbledore himself, getting the cordless phone from Ginny, called into the cable company to keep the television programming as it was. The confused customer service man was a little curious as to why the elderly man didn't want to upgrade the programming to more than the two worse channels in their system but bowed to his wishes. Hanging up the phone, Dumbledore pulled the tattered remains of the slingshot from the antenna of the phone and looked at it curiously.

"Now what on earth is this?" Looking at it from all angles, his inclined an eyebrow at the struggling form of Hermione on the floor then to Snape. "It looks like this feminine garment was taken off with somebody's over zealous teeth."

Pulling herself with a grunt from her trousers, Hermione snatched the battered bra from Dumbledore and raced up the stairs clad only in her shirt and bright pink panties. Looking almost more disturbed than he had when he'd exited the basement, Snape made a run for the stairs but his destination was his room, while Hermione's was the shower. Both shared the feeling that they would never be clean again.

*****

Snape didn't show up for dinner that evening, though Hermione told everyone gathered around the table he was only upstairs in their bedroom sick. What she didn't tell them, was that he'd been staring at the ceiling for more than an hour, looking thoroughly sick and mumbling about mental scarring, dogs and nipple clamps. She figured that he needed some alone time in order to process.

Emerging from the other room, Ron brought the pizza boxes and set them on the table while Ginny finished setting the table place for Basil. She insisted that he had to have a place despite the fact that he lived off a diet of Mountain Dew, so his setting only held a napkin and a large glass of the toxic substance.

"That pizza guy ran away pretty fast, does it still smell in here?" Ron asked as he opened the first box and passed the second one labeled ' 1/2 pineapple 1/2 Feta Cheese' to Quildemort who was grinning happily despite sporting amazingly dry skin from having been in the shower all day.

Grabbing a slice, Dumbledore sniffed for a smell but only shrugged merrily. "It smells only of pizza in here, and of last nights dinner."

"That's the problem," Harry muttered, as he grabbed a slice of cheese pizza from the box in front of Ron.

At the refrigerator Hermione stifled a laugh as she looked at Ron who was still wearing his crash helmet and his suit jacket since that hadn't been harmed by the water bomb incident. It was likely that the pizza delivery boy had taken one look at him and run for his life, the smell having no part in it. Removing a bottle of lemonade from the door, she shut the refrigerator and went to her seat. It was either believe that or admit that she had got used to the smell of anything containing eye of newt.

"How dare you!" Ginny suddenly squealed, glaring at the empty space to her left. "This dress does _not_ make my bum look enormous!"

There was a moment's silence, before Ron tentatively asked, "Are you talking to Basil, Gin?"

"I'm never talking to Basil _again_!" She declared, impressively. "He's a pig!"

"I thought he was a basilisk?" said Harry. But he said it under his breath, he was getting very fed up of Basil and had no wish to incur Ginny's wrath again.

"No Basil, I don't care how sorry you are. Some things are unforgiveable!"

She paused for a moment, presumably listening to Basil's reply, then grunted in anger and threw Basil's Mountain Dew in his face. Unfortunately, since Basil wasn't technically present, it went all over Voldemort. The dark lord glared at Ginny and for a moment it looked like there would be murder done, but before he could make a move, she ran from the room, crying.

Taking a slice of pizza, Draco limped after her muttering excuses that he was over tired and wanted to get some sleep. Harry, Ron and Hermione soon followed suit seeing as though they'd been up in front of the TV since the night before. Quirrell and Dumbledore watched them go while Voldemort wiped the Mountain Dew from his face with a napkin.

"How b-bad was it?" Quirrell ventured after a moment."

The older wizard grinned. "The spying was terrible, their plans were terrible, but it was all very imaginative."

"Did it really take Hermione and Ron an hour to detangle themselves?"

Dumbledore paused.

"If by detangle, you mean for Ms. Granger to pry herself out of those trousers with Mr. Weasley stuck to them... Yes." 

*****

Tired as he was, Harry found himself woken up during the night by a wailing noise. He wandered into the hallway and located the source of the noise on the first floor staircase.

"Ginny?"

She looked up at him and promptly burst into fresh floods of tears.

"Oh Harry, I'm so sorry! You were right about Basil. He was horrible. He was never really my friend in the first place."

Harry was about to remind her that he'd actually said that Basil didn't _exist_ in the first place, but settled for patting her on the shoulder and saying "there, there" in order to keep the peace.

"And he hates me now! I've heard him following me around the house, saying he wants to kill me!"

This time Harry really was going to tell her it was all in her head, but he was distracted by the angry hissing sound.

"SNAKE!" Ginny screamed, running for her room in a blur of tears and pigtails. Harry remained on the stairs. There wasn't really a basilisk, so why could he hear hissing? Maybe he was going mad the same as Ginny? He listened more closely and the hissing resolved itself into parseltongue.

"That'll teach the little cow to throw Mountain Dew in my face!"

Harry grinned. He'd forgotten that Voldemort slept under the stairs. He was about to go back to bed, when there was a crashing noise from the third floor and the house was filled with the sound of Draco wailing.

"I _told_ you you'd have a psychotic episode and ruin it! My beautiful, beautiful dress!"

Want to befriend a basilisk?  
Why not visit the site?  
http://www30.brinkster.com/bunkbeds/


	6. A Very Special Episode

_This fic is dedicated to Lady Alyssa and Random Flatmate/Dent who wrote the awesome 'Bagenders' and gave us permission to rip off some of their work in this fic._   
  
[A short note for the six people who have not yet finished Order of the Phoenix. Do not read this chapter before reading Order of the Phoenix! It will spoil three of the Brand New Characters! It will spoil one of The Relationships! It will spoil The Character Death! It will spoil The Climactic Battle! Most important of all, it will Not Make Any Sense! Finally we should point out that any criticism of Jo Rowling's writing is done with the greatest affection. We have the greatest respect for the woman, but she can be a smidge heavy handed. Also, we should mention that this will be the only OotP influenced chapter in this fic. Next chapter we'll be resuming our status as a wacky AU, we just had to get this out of our system first...]   
  
**A Very Special Episode of Bunkbeds**   
  
In the diary room, Ginny stared unblinkingly at the camera with very serious expression.   
  
"Hello, everybody. Today is a very special day..."   
  
She pulled an enormous hardback book from a backpack by her feet and laid it open on her lap. As she did so, she displayed a henna tattoo on her arm which read 'Mrs Ginny Thomas'.   
  
"Today we've done something in this house, which we have never dared do before."   
  
Ginny took a deep breath and spoke again.   
  
"We've broken the fourth wall!"   
  
She tossed a copy of 'The Quibbler' and some other assorted crap aside in order to prop the large book on the table. The book was not 'Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix', the book was 'War and Peace'. From downstairs came the sound of screaming.   
  
"WEASLEY, REBUILD THAT SODDING WALL! IT'S FREEZING IN HERE AND I'M TRYING TO WATCH TV!"   
  
Ginny beamed happily at the camera.   
  
"I love Russian literature!"   
  
*****   
  
Harry was in a bad mood. Ron and Draco's fight earlier that morning had taken out a substantial portion of the front wall of the house. As a result rain was pelting into the living room and soaking the inhabitants. The weather had been crappy all week. Hermione had airily explained that this was down to somebody called Jo having an over-reliance on pathetic fallacy and as none of the boys had understood what this meant, nobody had been able to contradict her.   
  
Hermione had been acting more oddly than usual ever since the summer solstice. She'd spent a lot of time ranting to anybody who would listen about how she had a perfect understanding of centaur etiquette and how only a complete idiot could mix up the runes for partnership and defence. Since nobody had been talking about centaurs or runes in the first place this struck everybody as highly suspicious. However, Hermione wasn't the only person who appeared to be losing their grip on reality.   
  
Harry had been asleep in the lounge, surrounded by smarties, when Sirius had emerged from the basement in search of food. Harry had promptly woken and raced across the hall to envelope Sirius in a bone crushing hug.   
  
"I love you. You know that right?"   
  
Sirius was shocked, to say the least, but responded admirably.   
  
"Um... yes?"   
  
Fortunately Sirius escaped from the death grip when Harry began sniffing suspiciously and asked why Sirius smelled of leather and candle wax. Sirius's answer made Harry let go in a hurry and The Boy Who Lived stomped into the living room to berate Draco, instead.   
  
"WHY DO YOU CONTINUE TO THROW THINGS AT MY HEAD? I'M _FAMOUS_ DAMMIT! I DEFEATED _VOLDEMORT_! WHY DOES EVERYBODY DO EVIL STUFF BEHIND MY _BACK_?"   
  
"I'm throwing them at your _face_, idiot! And can we take a break from the creepy mood swings? Because you're acting like an even bigger tit than usual."   
  
"OH YEAH? YOU'RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME!"   
  
Draco opened his mouth as though to deliver a devastating comeback and then paused, looked down at the lapel of his robes as if seeking some missing symbol of authority and then wandered into the garden, looking confused.   
  
Sirius, in the meantime, had completed his foraging mission and made his descent into the basement. Remus, who was sitting cross-legged on the shag carpeting of the terribly out-dated room, looked up at his arrival.   
  
"Sirius," he said quietly. "Have I told you lately that you're my best mate?"   
  
Sirius' mouth twitched. Everyone was acting odd. So he shouldn't have been surprised that when he went to answer, what came out wasn't at all what he had intended. In a cold voice he muttered, "Locked away in this house, not allowed to do anything useful. How can Dumbledore expect me to stay here?"   
  
Remus looked surprised and gave him a look that could probably pass for a leer on the stoic werewolf's face. On anyone else it would have been impassive. Actually, Sirius hoped it was a leer. "I think you're useful."   
  
"I miss Buckbeak," Sirius muttered, nonplussed.   
  
Rolling his eyes, Remus shook his head. "We are not having that discussion ever again."   
  
Instantly Sirius went into super-prat, pouting mode. Knowing that it was best to ignore him in this state, Remus picked up the newspaper and looked through the help-wanted ads and tried to keep optimistic about his unemployed state. Damn that woman and her prejudiced employment laws!   
  
A moment later, Remus looked up from his newspaper, puzzled. _What_ woman?   
  
*****   
  
"Has anybody seen Dumbledore?" Voldemort asked Ron that afternoon.   
  
"You mean he isn't in the living room watching soaps? That's odd."   
  
Voldemort nodded, looking grumpier than usual. (And for a person who is to all intents and purposes pasted onto the back of somebody else's head, that's pretty damn grumpy...)   
  
"The old simpleton keeps leaving post-its lying around the house mocking me. He also keeps addressing me as Tom. I was going to teach him a lesson, but I can't find him anywhere."   
  
"He's hiding out in the attic," said Harry walking in. "I passed him on the stairs, but he refused to meet my eyes. It's beginning to PISS ME OFF!"   
  
"Do you n-need some of Hermione's m-m-midol?"   
  
Harry glared at Quildemort and stalked from the room in a temper. There was nothing good on television, so Ron followed Quildemort upstairs to watch the confrontation with Dumbledore. When they got upstairs, Dumbledore had already left the attic. It was not uninhabited however. Hanging from one of the rafters was a young woman whose short hair kept rapidly changing colours. She was very, very dead. Pinned to the ceiling beside her was a note, which Ron read aloud.   
  
"Dear all,   
  
I'm sorry, I was just too fucking annoying to live. I hereby renounce my boring, trying-way-to-hard, Mary Sueish ways and take the only honourable way out.   
  
Nymphomaniac Knots   
  
P.S. I broke your floor. Sorry about that."   
  
Sure enough there was a big hole in the floor, where Nymphomaniac had put her foot through it. Quildemort knelt down to look through and then reared backwards almost immediately as a paranoid and jittery Pigwidgeon came zooming through the hole from Draco and Ginny's bedroom. It was at this point that the other inhabitant of the attic revealed himself.   
  
As Pig dive-bombed haphazardly amongst the books and piles of boxes, there came a high pitched squeal and a scuffle. The scuffle sounded a bit like drunken tap dancing punctuated by boxes falling over and at the end there was a high pitched, "Nasty owlses! Twinkie hates nasty owlses, hates unnatural beasties! Is that a sock? Owls!"   
  
A tiny house elf staggered from the ruins of the attic, looking dazed. Her knobbly body was covered in several tie-dyed bandanas knotted together and she wore so many sparkly bangles that her arms were no longer visible. Seeing Ron and Quildemort, the little elf smiled dazedly and hoped around. "Twinkie's a good elf, staying put and not touching the nasty owlses. No owlses, ginger hair looks horrible on the nasty boy. Nasty boy! Twinkie's a good elf, yes she is."   
  
Hopping from one foot to the other, the elf seemed oblivious to the hanging body behind it. Catching the confused expressions, the elf launched itself to attach to Quildemort's leg. "Masters! Kind masters, Twinkie hates the ginger hair! It burns! It burns!"   
  
Ron looked uncomfortable. Shoving his hands in his pockets, in what he felt was a nonchalant way, Ron tried to look smooth but quickly gave up and dashed out of the attic searching for the nearest window. Somewhere around the landing he stopped and called up, "Oi! Tom...er... Quildemort! There's another sticky from Dumbledore. It says something about exfoliating yourself off... oh right."   
  
Then the sound of the mad dash continued.   
  
In the kitchen Ginny was fixing some tea for herself, Hermione and Snape. Snape was looking surly and poring over the ledger while Hermione was looking wistfully out into the rain. Every once in a while Hermione would move her gaze from the window to the man sitting opposite, and every time her eyes fell on him, Snape would look up accusingly. Ginny found this entire scene very odd but contented herself with fixing tea and perusing a box of brownie mix. The directions seemed simple enough.   
  
Idly she scratched her right arm on the tattoo that read "Mrs. Ginny Creevy". It was right below the previous one, which had been crossed out in thick henna lines. If anyone had thus far noticed anything amiss, no one was saying anything. Not that Ginny noticed her own behavior. As far as she was concerned, it was everybody else who was acting a bit nutty.   
  
"What has Potter told you?" Snape suddenly shot out, accusingly glaring at Hermione.   
  
Hermione didn't take the bait, only looked at Snape levelly before looking back out the window. "I'm not speaking to Harry at the moment, every other sentence he comes out with is him reminding me how neglected he is and what a bloody hero he is. If I wanted melodrama I'd be watching Soaps with Dumbledore."   
  
"Draco," Ginny supplied. "Dumbledore is out in the garden talking to Hagrid. Since the wall fell in, the only person who's stayed in the living room is Draco. But I wouldn't go in there. He's being right insulting."   
  
"It's Draco, he's always being insulting."   
  
Ginny had to agree; it seemed to be Draco's lot in life to insult. And steal her clothes, but that was another matter entirely.   
  
"That said I don't see why I should subject myself to it. It's bad enough that I'm stuck in this house with a maniac, a mass murderer, a manic-depressive and a house elf with no inner monologue."   
  
As if summoned, Twinkie scurried into the kitchen, bangles jangling. She was followed by Ron, who was still shaking bloodstained pieces of shredded post-it notes out of his hair.   
  
"Do the good masters want food? Twinkie will make food. Twinkie knows that the greasy man tries to poison the other masters with the bad foodses."   
  
Hermione rolled her eyes.   
  
"It's like having our very own narrator, she remarked in high dudgeon," said Hermione, trying her own hand at narrating.   
  
"I suspect that will get very annoying, very quickly."   
  
"Remarked Snape," said Hermione, continuing to narrate.   
  
"Hermione, shut up!"   
  
"Ron ejaculated loudly." Hermione paused. "Pretend I didn't say that."   
  
Harry wandered past the doorway for just long enough to remark that Hermione had no idea as she didn't have to share a room with the ginger haired hormone bomb. Ron did the only thing he could do in the circumstances and threw himself out of the window.   
  
"Perhaps Weasley should confine himself to the living room for the foreseeable future?" Snape suggested. "That way, when he feels the urge to throw himself out of the house he can do it through the gaping hole in the living room wall. Honestly, our repair bills must constitute a complete retirement fund for those glaziers."   
  
As a matter of fact, Snape's words were being echoed in the living room, as Rico and Juan sang to themselves while repairing the front wall.   
  
"Weasley is our King,  
Weasley is our King,  
He bashes all the windows in,  
Weasley is our King.   
  
Weasley can break anything,  
He always calls the glaziers in,  
And that's why we repairmen sing,  
Weasley is our King!"   
  
*****   
  
With the living room at least enclosed, if not completely repaired, Ginny ventured into the living room while her Brownies were baking. Twinkie kept dashing around the room, with shifty eyes while muttering about evil ginger hair, owls and something about frolicking kittens. Ginny knew better than to ask and instead focused in on Draco and Harry who seemed all set for a really spectacular row, even by the impressive standards of the houseshare.   
  
"Listen, Malfoy, your dad can rot for all I care!" Harry was already wound up, and the way the verbal sparring was going, there was no way to figure out what had started the entire thing. From the kitchen, Snape had his money on asbestos in the house.   
  
Draco's face looked pinched and instead of a wand he was brandishing the television remote menacingly. "You'll pay for that Potter. Your poncey godfather can't save you forever, no matter what they say about man's best friend!"   
  
"You'd know all about being poncey wouldn't you? Does your lip gloss match your knickers?"   
  
"It takes a real man to wear knickers," Draco snapped back, knuckles white on the remote. "You'll never be that manly."   
  
"WATCH ME!" Harry huffed, shaking with rage. Outside the distant rumble of thunder accompanied a fresh batch of driving rain. Lightning flashed and was reflected in Harry's tumultuous eyes. "I'LL SHOW YOU MANLY. WHY DOES EVERYONE DOUBT ME?"   
  
"Knickers be for girls, masters." Twinkie piped up helpfully as she hopped around the maze of Smarties that had developed on the floor. On her third curcuit she swept up the mess, then continued hopping again. "Knickers are not for Twinkie, no, nasty clothes are tricksy. Yes, made by owlses. Sticky notes are everywhere."   
  
"STOP PATRONIZING ME," Harry shouted at the house elf, who didn't seem at all perturbed. "I want to go and live with Sirius, why are you all always making me suffer?"   
  
With a huff, Harry stomped across the room and exited through the door leading down to the basement. Several minutes passed and he did not return. Malfoy looked mutinously at Ginny who was waiting for her timer to beep in the other room. Feeling as though a petty win was as good a real one, Malfoy smirked at Ginny and said, "Creevey, eh? Sounds about right for the intelligence level of a Weasley."   
  
Ginny, who was in all probability the most in control member of the house at this point, informed Draco scathingly that she was with Professor Firenze these days, then did the muggle equivalent of casting Stupefy. Having chucked her copy of War and Peace at his head, she then went to tend to her brownies as Draco hit the floor unconscious. Alone in the living room, Twinkie glared about the room and started stuffing any spare object left lying around into the folds of her many bandanas. When she tried to make a getaway, all the objects fell through the cloth and onto the floor, but Twinkie didn't seem bothered. She'd seen something shiny and had wandered away.   
  
*****   
  
The comments about frolicking kittens were explained later that day, when Snape, Twinkie and Hermione went upstairs, to clear out Nymphomaniac's corpse and some other junk that appeared to have apparated into the attic while nobody was looking. In addition to a pile of jewelry and silverware that Twinkie promptly claimed as 'her preciouses' they had found an alarming amount of lace doilies, coasters and antimacassars, Anne Geddes merchandise and kitten covered wall hangings.   
  
Hermione was just suggesting that they take it all out into the garden and ask Hagrid to burn it, when Twinkie, seeing this as a potential threat to her stash of sparkly stuff, went charging at Hermione intent on tackling her to the ground. Unfortunately, Hermione had enough experience in dodging flying Weasleys, that she was able to easily sidestep the crazed house elf, who instead went charging into Snape, who fell out of the attic and onto the third floor landing with a large crash. Harry, who was passing underneath and apparently ensconced in one of his manic phases, took a moment to run screaming down the hallway, informing the world at large that although circumstances had brought him a greater understanding of Snape, he was not ready to see his graying threadbare Y-fronts.   
  
When the subject was inevitably revisited later that day, Draco enquired politely whether laundry day had come and gone. Snape informed him that doing laundry involved visiting the basement and since Sirius was stuck inside all day, with nothing better to do, _he_ should do all the housework. Everybody was somewhat nonplussed by this, since they were _all_ stuck in the house all day and had been for some time. Fortunately, Snape avoided further questioning as Harry distracted everybody by bursting into tears at the mention of Sirius's name.   
  
In the end Hermione managed to remove the puke-inducing household accessories from the attic, mostly due to the fact that she was an unusually good sprinter and ran off with them before Twinkie could recover from seeing Snape in his uncharacteristically grotty underpants. She then headed for the back garden, quickly joined by Ron who was shoving as many brownies and pastries into his mouth as was humanly possible. Ginny had baked all afternoon, tidied up all joint living areas after that and was currently ending her day by discussing War and Peace (which she had finished) with Quirrell who was more than a bit shocked to be addressed directly.   
  
"Hagrid?" Hermione queried as she opened the back door. When the turned on the back light and the great half-giant came into view she nearly teared up. She felt as though she hadn't seen him in ages, and that she'd been carrying around a lot of anxiety due to his absence.   
  
Her anxiety abruptly changed source as Hagrid turned to look at them and Ron nearly chocked to death on his brownie. Gasping for air, a more than a little blue in the face, Ron asked, "What truck hit you, mate?"   
  
If it had been a truck, one that had torn through the backyard and not alerted anyone or torn up the garden more than the average Weasley swan dive, it had done nasty work on their friend's face. Both eyes were black, there was a cut on his left cheekbone, his hair was matted with blood, he was limping, his right arm was in a sling and he was wearing a neck brace. Before he could speak he had to spit a bright orange mouth guard out. "Nothing at all to worry about. Just me an' Fang wrestling with that bloody mole that's been ruining the garden."   
  
Hermione took a deep breath, and in a very solemn voice said, "Hagrid. You don't have to cover for him. That's not love."   
  
"If Tina Turner got her life back, so can you." Ron managed this with an entire square of strudel in his cheeks.   
  
As the friends looked at each other with pain-filled eyes, Fang howled mournfully. Fluffy looked at his master with tear filled eyes and overhead the clear sky broke into sheets of rain. Hagrid looked up to the heavens and said, "I can't help it. That mole... he's my brother!"   
  
His cry echoed through the heavens, making Ron fall to his knees in the rain soaked mud.   
  
"No!" He moaned, grasping himself and looking pitiful. "It's not true... THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE!"   
  
Resolutely Hermione dropped the haul from the attic in the grass. She'd known letting the boys watch the Star Wars Trilogy back to back on the television had been a mistake. She just hadn't known how big a mistake it was until Ron took to wearing all black in addition to a single black glove. Added to Harry's delusion that he lived in a teen, made for TV drama and Ginnys new independent woman stance Hermione's life felt comparatively normal. That is, until she went to bed that night and in the darkness found herself engaging Snape in a tirade on how the warped female mind worked.   
  
Not that Snape had minded. Since she wasn't treating him any differently than the others his paranoia was appeased and he was able to sleep.   
  
*****   
  
"This house resembles bedlam more closely than usual," Voldemort groused in the diary room. "It feels like a different reality is trying to imprint itself upon this one. There's no other explanation for Dumbledore's odd behaviour or the fact that Rubeus has spent most of the night trying to get in touch with his roots and I do mean that literally. Do you know what a mess it makes when a half-giant attempts to burrow underneath a suburban lawn?"   
  
Voldemort sighed deeply and Quirrel continued the tale.   
  
"All in all, w-we think something s-s-suspicious is happening. Of the two, I think I p-p-p-prefer _predictable_ chaos!"   
  
"It's possible," said Voldemort, as Quirrel swung the swivel chair around so that his master was facing the camera once again, "that this whole thing is the result of Ginny's last order to Amazon.com. She ordered a job lot of Russian literature while she was still in her dictator phase and large books have a powerful magic all of their own. I think I'll have to confiscate the littlest Weasley's copy of War and Peace..."   
  
Voldemort's evil laugh would have sounded much better if a lungful of dust hadn't turned it into a coughing fit at the last second. The diary room hadn't been cleaned in some considerable time. Ron, who had been down on the cleaning rota, had been more concerned with secretly practicing Quidditch in the garden recently, in spite of the pouring rain. Realising this, Quildemort headed downstairs. Confiscating Ginny's book and reasserting reality could wait until he was done leaving subliminal death threats for Ron lying around in the kitchen.   
  
***   
  
Another morning showed Dumbledore to be MIA and as a result, the house was soap opera free for another entire day. At first no one noticed, as the occupants of the house-share generally walked around like zombies for the first couple of hours each morning before something was destroyed and all adrenaline was restored. It was Hermione who eventually noticed the lack of 1970s soap opera reruns.   
  
Nursing a mug of coffee, she asked, "Where is Dumbledore this morning?"   
  
As she said this, Dumbledore strode out of the pantry majestically, and said, "It is time for me to tell you what I should have told you five days ago, Hermione. Please sit down. I am going to tell you everything. I ask only a little patience. You will have your chance to rage at me, to do whatever you like- when I have finished. I will not stop you."   
  
Hermione gave Dumbledore an odd look, but sat down and nobly suppressed the urge to ask him what the hell he had been doing in the pantry with the lights off.   
  
"I have spent the last five days putting off the moment when I must tell you what I know. I've made many mistakes. Was my waiting for the best or was it folly to think you too young?"   
  
Hermione noticed then that no one else was in sight. It was just dawn and pinkish light streaked through the windows to cast dim shadows off her teacup. "With all due respect, Headmaster, five days really wouldn't have changed my perspective on things."   
  
In the early light Dumbledore looked old and tired. "At first I thought of telling you after you tripped Professor Snape to reach the bathroom that morning five days ago. I told myself it could wait, you must have your victory. You seemed so happy then."   
  
"Well, yes," said Hermione. "Because you know how quickly the hot water gets used up in-"   
  
"My next opportunity to tell you came four days ago, when you were trying to persuade Draco not to try building a double bladed lightsaber. At the time I thought keeping the house from burning down was more important. Was I wrong?"   
  
"Probably not." Hermione reassured him. "That thing was a total health hazard. Laser beams in confined spaces are always a bad idea. I thought he'd learned that lesson after the do-it-yourself microsurgery incident, but apparently not."   
  
As the sun rose further into the sky, shadows vanished from the tabletop, like the cheap, atmospheric tools of a hack writer trying to emphasize a moment of revelation.   
  
"Three days ago the front wall of the house came down and caused much strife. You proved yourself time and again; shouting at the boys, demanding Quildemort's silence on the matter and volunteering to call the builders. I'd realized that you were growing into your own. No one else could have put things back in order."   
  
"Save the return of Communist Weasley." Hermione muttered. She was getting frustrated and finally understood Harry's bi-polar mood swings. Absently she wondered where everyone else was, as the sun was reaching full noon.   
  
"Then yesterday," continued Dumbledore, "during the unfortunate incident in the attic where Professor Snape accidentally exposed himself. I found myself once again unable to tell you."   
  
"Pity," Hermione said shortly. "I could have done with a distraction just then."   
  
By now, however, she was only half listening to the Headmaster's words. Dumbledore may be old and puissant, but he didn't half go on at times. It was almost as if somebody were needlessly dragging out his confession in order to increase dramatic tension.   
  
"By now, having shown yourself to be equal to the horrors of Severus's emergency underpants, my excuses were running out. Young you might be, but you had proved you were exceptional. My conscience was uneasy, Hermione. I knew the time must come soon."   
  
"The time for what?" Snapped Hermione, losing her temper. "Is there even a point to this story?"   
  
"We are no longer receiving the Soap Opera channel," Dumbledore informed her gravely. "I fear the repair bill for fixing the cable will be immense. I need to sneak it into the household finances without alerting Professor Snape."   
  
"Sorry," Hermione told him. "He doesn't let me near that ledger anymore. It's a bit weird, really."   
  
"Then I must find somebody else to act as my agent," said Dumbledore, standing up and preparing to retreat into the pantry at the sound of somebody heading down from the third floor.   
  
"But sir! Wait! What about all the other oddities? The post it notes for Quildemort? The way you've been playing hide and seek with everybody?"   
  
Dumbledore shrugged. "I was bored. I haven't been able to watch any of my programs."   
  
With that the pantry door clicked shut.   
  
Hermione frowned and decided that she'd had enough of the house share. With full intentions of doing Snape's laundry to put her mind at ease, followed by a very long nap helped by earplugs, she wandered upstairs.   
  
Ron passed her on the stairs with a sleepy 'good morning' despite the fact that it was going on for 1pm. For the first time ever, he'd beaten the queue for the bathroom. The rest of the house share was currently engaged in a melee for the shower.   
  
In the kitchen he put together some tea and pointedly ignored the strange noises coming from the pantry. His Ginny training was flawless. From upstairs he heard the triumphant double-cry of 'Shower is MINE!' Followed by Harry proclaiming that he'd use the basement shower and Quildemort screaming in a high pitched way and fleeing the bathroom.   
  
From his safe place downstairs, Ron grinned. He probably should have warned them about the owls who'd taken up the shower rod as their turf. It sounded like Quildemort hadn't paid their tithe.   
  
The kettle went and Ron finished making his tea. The noises from the pantry continued, but only worried him when Ginny popped in for a drink. If Ginny was there, and the others were upstairs...   
  
"Must be a draft," he concluded. When all else fails, denial is just the thing.   
  
By the time he had finished his tea, he's developed a nervous tic that Quirrell would have envied. The noises were driving him mad. The caffeine from the tea was just kicking in and he was trying to read his tea leaves as a distraction when Snape wandered in to make breakfast.   
  
"Di... dia... die..." Ron squinted as the pantry door rattled. Snape didn't even look up, but it all made sense.   
  
The leaves said 'Die Ron! Die!"   
  
From behind him Snape let out a horrified scream and Ron did what came naturally, after throwing himself out of windows. He dropped his teacup with a clatter and ran like he was being chased by bees... or Ginny.   
  
Snape, who had recovered, shot the boy's retreating form a glare before glancing back at the empty pantry. A single yellow post-it note was attached to the broom that had fallen and surprised him enough to make him shout.   
  
Leaning down, he picked it up. Its message made him scowl.   
  
'Severus,   
  
It's a matter of some urgency that Mister Potter learn bookkeeping. I suggest you teach him.   
  
Ta!   
  
A.P.W.B.D.'   
  
***   
  
Somehow Snape made accounting sound as dangerous and silky as potion making. "It's simple, Potter. You run the tallies in this column, write all information to the left of it and in the margin you write who rang up the bill."   
  
Harry looked at Snape, barely able to hide his dislike. "Why does Dumbledore want me to learn to do this? Why doesn't he teach me himself?"   
  
"Not everything," Snape almost spat, "is about you. Now run these figures and I will recheck your work."   
  
Pulling a face and making a rude hand gesture, Harry went to work about the tallies. Glass repair. Glass repair. Groceries. Estimates on utilities. More glass repair.... Did that say 'chains and manacles'? Next to that were the initials S.B., the very sight of which made Harry's tolerance for the task lower.   
  
Seeing that Snape was busy pulling ingredients for dinner from the cabinets, Harry ruffled through the pages of the ledger. Ron sure went through a lot of glass. He suddenly understood why Rico had shown up for the last job in a Porsche instead of the company's repair truck. Some entries were comical, like Hagrid's botany expenses and Quildemort's custom-made, Swiss moisturizer. Others less amusing, like the entries labeled 'female miscellaneous' and 'basement perversion'. Just like Snape to label Sirius that way, the slimy git!   
  
Then something fell out of the ledger. It hit the table extremely dramatically, almost in slow motion, the obvious sign of an ominous portent. Harry looked up. Snape was still rummaging in the cabinets. Silence seemed to permeate the house share for the first time in its history. With shaking hands he picked up the obviously secret item from the table.   
  
It was a receipt from a book shop listing three items. _So You Shagged a Student_ by Lolita Landerbrut, _Wise Warlocks and their Wands: An Ageing Wizard's Guide to Sustained Sexual Satisfaction_ by Dr. Troy Proudstaff and _They Say It's Wrong, but You Say It's Great_ by N. Joy Aminer. The receipt was made out to one Severus Snape. All at once Harry felt amused, squicked and a new height of blinding rage.   
  
Knowing that it was best, he went to slip the receipt back in the ledger. It was almost certainly best to ignore it and file the find away in his mind as something never to think about. Then suddenly, he felt Snape's bony fingers on his shoulder. When he spoke it was in a slippery, unpleasant sort of voice. "Amused, are we, Potter?"   
  
"Ye... NO!" Harry shouted, jumping from his seat to glare at Snape. "I didn't mean to find that, you gave the ledger to me. IF DUMBLEDORE HAD DONE THIS HIMSELF I... I would probably still have found it but I wouldn't have to deal with whatever abuse you are going to cook up for me."   
  
"Cook up, I will. Never fear." Snape looked at Harry with a malicious grin. If Harry had been in the right state of mind he would have seen the panic behind Snape's eyes. The sort of panic that would have sent Ron through a window, Hermione running repeatedly into a magical barrier and Ginny on a destructive rampage. Though Ginny went on destructive rampages when it rained, when she was happy, when she was being chased by imaginary basilisks and on days with a Y in.   
  
Confused by his own thoughts, Harry arranged his face into an impressive teenage sulk and entertained soothing thoughts about how much of a martyr he was. Or how Snape had to read books to feel all right about his 'ageing wand'. Fortunately he didn't have to entertain those thoughts long as Hermione and Ginny walked into the room and Snape swept up the receipt, the ledger and with a parting glare, stalked from the room with a parting, "You'll pay."   
  
Once he was gone, Harry sank back down in a chair and smirked. Ginny didn't notice and Hermione was too smart to ask. Both reactions sent Harry on a major pout.   
  
"Have you seen my copy of the _Feminine Mystique_?" Ginny asked Harry, as he was the only person left in the house that she hadn't asked. He shrugged in a moody, teenaged sort of way so as to look simultaneously disinterested and unhelpful. He couldn't help but notice that Firenze had been crossed out on her arm and had been replaced by the name of the Giant Squid. This was yet another disturbing thought that Harry would have to mentally file under very bad things.   
  
"Oh!" Hermione said, dragging Ginny out of the room. "I think I saw Twinkie reading it earlier!"   
  
Yes, very bad things.   
  
***   
  
Things came to a head later that day, when there was a knock on the (hastily rebuilt) front door of the house. Harry opened the door to reveal a squat, toad-looking woman with a clipboard, who didn't bother to give her name, but merely gave a little and obviously fake cough, then marched into the house and asked who had stolen her furnishings.   
  
Twinkie, who had been bouncing on the sofa, abruptly screamed and ran up the stairs involuntarily yelling at the assembled witches and wizards. "Twinkie will run away from the bad witchie, yes! Twinkie will keep the silver from the ugly kittens and the micromanaging dictator lady. Yes Twinkie is a good elf and must find her preciousesss!" From the top of the house came the sound of the attic door being slammed and objects being piled against it. Hermione, meanwhile had worked out from the reference to kittens what the creepy cough woman might be looking for. The only tiny snag was that the objects in question were currently being added to a bonfire in the back garden: a fact which Ron, with his usual tact and discretion, lost no time in pointing out to the visitor.   
  
"In that case," said the toad-faced lady, glaring at him, "I will be forced to repossess your furniture in recompense, in accordance with educational decree number four thousand six hundred and eighty two."   
  
"Educational decree? It's the school holidays!" Hermione responded scathingly.   
  
The toad lady scribbled something on her clipboard, then read it aloud.   
  
"All magical persons discovered burning the exclusive property of the High Inquisitor will be forced to surrender their own possessions up to the holder of the aforesaid office. This will teach the parties in question a valuable lesson and is thus covered under the provision of magical education act."   
  
Harry was about to argue that they had no way of knowing they weren't supposed to burn things that randomly appeared in _their_ attic, but a sudden inexplicable pain in his hand made him think better of the outburst and he maintained an angry silence. Ginny felt no such compunction.   
  
"Property is theft. I have no intention of legitimising your appropriation of the rightful belongings of the masses by allowing you to remove furnishings from this house."   
  
"Little girls," the high inquisitor told her sweetly, "should be seen and not heard."   
  
Hermione's snort of deep indignation, prompted Snape to step forward.   
  
"Then allow me to reiterate everything she said." Snape paused for a moment, then added. "Except for the part about property being theft, but the rest of it certainly stands. You will not remove a single item from this house."   
  
"I think you underestimate the power of the office I hold!"   
  
"And I think you underestimate our contempt for the edifice which supports it," argued Ginny, not at all cowed. "Any power you may have is inauthentic, callously stolen from its true possessors: the proletariat."   
  
The high inquisitor now refused to address Ginny directly, but turned to Snape instead.   
  
"Tell the little girl that such behaviour is treasonous under educational decree number four hundred and twelve. All true patriots recognize the necessity of my office and support it."   
  
"By which you presumably mean the privileged few who reap the rewards of such a system to the inevitable detriment of the downtrodden masses?" Ginny shot back. "I've never heard such bourgeois twaddle! Your supposed patriotic system creates class distinction in the place of a unity, inevitably leading to the fall of such a system at the hands of the repressed. When a ruling class subjugates the labor and free will of a society it destabilizes the entire system and loses legitimacy."   
  
Ginny had worked herself up into awesome indignation. Snape looked almost fondly down at her, but stopped short as he had unpleasant flashbacks to what her righteousness could produce. Then, noticing that the squat woman was gathering herself up for a rebuttal, Snape smirked at the angry, squat little bureaucrat. There was no winning an argument with Ginny Weasley on the subject of politics. If she couldn't sway you with words, she would just club you into unconsciousness with a chair leg.   
  
"Little girl, you don't understand that these policies exist to benefit _you_. It's for your own good that you learn your place and measure up in the same mold as every one else. Your head has been filled with ridiculous lies against an institution that is obviously in the right. Clearly, someone has been feeding you ideological nonsense. What is established is right. You are wrong."   
  
"Have you read Kafka? 'Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice...' Blind acceptance of anything is folly, the so called idealism is logical when given the choice between the chains of your so called democracy and free thinking. You and your badge of office have no power over this house share."   
  
That got Ginny a patronizing little smile. "Well, you are not the one who decides that. My office was appointed to me by the Minister of Magic. If you want to change the institution then when you grow up, work your way up the ranks and learn a little bit more. Now is there a grown up I can talk to?"   
  
The woman eyed Snape, who knew better than to get in the middle of the argument. Which was a smart move as Ginny tore right back.   
  
"Coup d'etat is the only thing for an _institution_." Ginny responded, spitting the last word as though it tasted worse than eye of newt and crossing her arms over her chest. "When you hide behind the word, when a government or an idea become too sacred to change with time and to benefit the populace, it is archaic and needs to be torn down. Man is condemned to be free, we are responsible for our actions, our government and we make our own place in the world. We owe you no fealty."   
  
While Snape and Ginny continued to face off against the invader, another heated discussion was occurring behind them.   
  
"Why has my sister gone all political again?" Ron asked the others. "She hasn't seen imaginary basilisks in a week and she keeps acting... well... _sane_! Don't any of you remember the chaos that happened the last time that she went sane? We need to _do_ something!"   
  
"We need to know what happened," said Hermione firmly. "Everything's been weirder than usual lately, but I can't think why!"   
  
"Much vaunted intelligence not working today?" Voldemort asked her nastily.   
  
"SHUT UP!" Harry yelled, succumbing to another fit of temper. "It's not as though _you_ can explain what's happening!"   
  
"Can't I Potter?" Asked Voldemort with a sneer. "Obviously you learned nothing from your experiences with my younger self. In the right hands the pen can be mightier than the sword."   
  
"That can't be right," argued Ron. "You can't cut somebody's head off with a pen."   
  
Foreseeing Quildemort's inevitable attempt to prove that you could if you really _tried_, Hermione tried to bring the conversation back to the point.   
  
"You're talking about magical books, aren't you?"   
  
"N-Not at all Miss G-G-Granger. Even ordinary m-m-muggle books wield enormous p-power over the reader."   
  
"And we have reason to believe that Weasley Minor's copy of War and Peace has taken on extra power from being kept in a house containing so much pent up magic."   
  
Harry was puzzled.   
  
"What are you saying?"   
  
"Do I have to spell it out for you, idiot boy? We've been thrust willy nilly into an alternate reality by a piece of overlong Russian literature."   
  
"As the effects of enchanted volumes go, Tom, this one seems rather mild," remarked Dumbledore.   
  
"There is nothing worse than having your reality warped by Tolstoy, Dumbledore!" snarled Voldemort.   
  
"You are quite wrong, said Dumbledore. "Indeed, your failure to understand that there are things much worse than Tolstoy has always been your greatest weakness."   
  
"It's true." Hermione pointed out. "What about The Bewitching Bestseller of Bath? That book had a charm on it so you couldn't stop reading it! Or there was that encyclopaedia by Edgar the Effulgent that burned your eyeballs out! Not to mention dangerous muggle texts like The Communist Manifesto, Mein Kampf and Ulrika Johnson's autobiography!"   
  
"Never mind all that," said Draco. "I want to know why we couldn't have landed in an alternate reality where we could escape this damn house! I mean, one's got to exist, right?"   
  
Hermione nodded.   
  
"Certainly, the thinking goes that any reality which can exist without defying logic, does exist somewhere."   
  
Ron became excited.   
  
"So somewhere out there, there's a reality where I'm worshipped by hordes of naked women?"   
  
Hermione placed a comforting hand on his shoulder and told him sadly "You can't square the circle, Ron."   
  
"Phew," said Malfoy. "I was worried for a moment that there might be a reality where I'm not a charming and devilishly handsome young sex god!"   
  
Hermione decided to see if she could get Quildemort to try that 'chopping somebody's head off with a pen' thing, since Draco's had evidently grown too large to be supported by his relatively slim shoulders. Voldemort however had taken offence to being called Tom one too many times and was currently involved in a fistfight with Dumbledore, hampered somewhat by the fact that he was facing the wrong way to hit him properly. Hermione was about to try and intervene, but was distracted by the argument between Ginny and Toadie. Which had turned into a slanging match of epic proportions.   
  
Ginny was on a roll. "LISTEN YOU PATRONISING OLD HAG, DON'T YOU CONDESCEND TO ME OR I'LL GET MY BOYFRIEND TO KICK YOUR ASS! THE TROUBLE WITH YOUR TYPE IS YOU HAVEN'T GOT THE GUTS FOR ANYTHING BUT HALF MEASURES!"   
  
At her last word Snape, who was mediating the match, turned to the opposition with quirked brow. Taking that as her cue, the stranger began her rebuttal. It was at this point that Ron wandered over with a confused expression from the get go.   
  
"And the trouble with your type is you have no understanding of _subtlety_! A secret police will never be as effective as a few well placed laws, ostensibly in the interests of patriotism which will force the population to police _each other_!"   
  
The woman had a high pitched girlie voice that grated on the nerves in the exact same way as Voldemort's whining voice. With the way Voldemort was trying to throw right hooks, without being able to see where he was punching, no one was about to comment on the fact.   
  
"What are they talking about?" Ron asked Snape, but only got a glare as an answer. As far as Ron could tell, this was a flashback to Ginny's führer phase. He understood that much, and thanks to Hermione's detailed explanations following Ginny's reign of terror, he even had a vague grasp on some of the arguments Ginny was putting forward. He was stumped, however, by the warped logic the other lady working by? Whatever it was, he was sure no mass population would ever buy into it. Ron was not a political animal, yet he felt instinctively that a successful Minister of Magic should have integrity, the people's interests at heart and the ability to pronounce the word 'nuclear'. Confused by this last thought, Ron went to question Hermione, who started to explain something about thinly veiled political parallels, but was distracted when the high inquisitor got bored of arguing with Ginny, stormed into the house and made a grab for the television set.   
  
There was instant uproar. Everybody except the two eldest wizards lunged to stop her and the result was two separate fistfights, which rapidly combined into a single brawl of epic proportions. Since the housemates outnumbered the high inquisitor eight to one, they were hitting each other more often than they were hitting her so that their numbers were swiftly depleted as they managed to knock each other out.   
  
Harry watched dazedly from the floor as the high inquisitor picked up the television and started to carry it from the room, unstopped by the two remaining conscious wizards: Dumbledore and Quildemort. This was largely because Dumbledore had Quildemort in a headlock, and wasn't letting go for anything, although he looked clearly conflicted at the eminent loss of his beloved television set.   
  
"Let her take it, Dumbledore," Voldemort rasped. "If Tolstoy is nothing, Dumbledore, let her take the television."   
  
Let the madness stop, thought Harry. Let him fix things... End it, Dumbledore. Death is nothing compared to a life without La Femme Nikita... And I'll see Sirius again...   
  
As Harry fainted dramatically, Dumbledore released Quildemort, who ran for the third floor, smacking the high inquisitor over the head with a small, ornamental statue of a centaur as he did so. She had barely regained her equilibrium when Quildemort ran back down the stairs, carrying Ginny's copy of War and Peace and heading towards the back garden.   
  
"Hem hem!"   
  
"Good point!"   
  
Voldemort grinned at the repellent woman and hitched up the hem of his robes in order to run faster. The others followed him through the kitchen and onto the patio, from where he flung Ginny's copy of War and Peace forcefully onto the bonfire.   
  
Reality reasserted itself with a painful thump.   
  
***   
  
A week later Ginny sat in the diary room, speaking to the camera once more. She appeared to remember nothing of their short stint in an alternate reality, although the signs which, in another person, might have indicated a period of confusion followed by a severe shock, were constantly present in Ginny anyway.   
  
"My books disappeared," Ginny was informing the camera, somewhat sadly. "I think perhaps the basilisk ate them. Luckily I've got other things to keep me occupied these days. I've been talking to Tom a lot, I'm planning to steal my dresses back from Draco" Ginny rolled up her sleeve, to reveal that her arm was now graced with one solitary henna tattoo. " And of course, I've been spending a lot of time with my new lover, J. K. Rowling!"   
  


**Want more snark at Rowling's expense?  
Why not visit the site?  
www30.brinkster.com/bunkbeds/**


	7. Sickness, Insanity and the Monthlies

_This fic is dedicated to Lady Alyssa and Random Flatmate/Dent who wrote the awesome 'Bagenders' and gave us permission to rip off some of their work in this fic._

**Episode Six: Sickness, Insanity and the Monthlies**

Padding down the stairs, Harry fought down another bout of nausea and silently cursed the throbbing in his head. He'd been up for hours, trying to fall back asleep but had given up when dawn had sent light spilling in through the huge bedroom window. Upon sitting up, his general feeling of nastiness had increased a million times and he'd been forced to run to the bathroom to avoid retching all over his carpet.   
  
With a sigh he unbuttoned the top button of his pyjama top to ease the choking sensation and stepped into the kitchen. The smell of coffee nearly sent him running for the bathroom again but his surprise at seeing Sirius Black and Remus Lupin sitting at the kitchen table drove the thought from his mind and replaced it with shock. He liked them both very much, but along with everybody else in the house, he tended to forget they were there.  
  
"All right there, Harry?" his godfather asked in a tone that would have suggested that they had the conversation every day.   
  
Harry's jaw dropped open enough that he resembled a sea-bass or some other large mouthed fish.   
  
Lupin smiled slightly, his amber eyes showing some concern at Harry's pale colouring. "You don't look so good. There's a good chance you've got the same flu we had."   
  
"Er... flu?" Blinking, Harry made a few incoherent noises of disbelief before managing to form a sentence. "It's not flu, it's ebola!"   
  
Sirius laughed, a sharp noise in the silent house. "I suggest you take a shower and steam some of that out, if anyone else catches it you may never see the bathroom again."   
  
Harry nodded, his eyes falling on the booklet Lupin was fingering on the table. "I think... I have to go... vomit."   
  
Darting from the room, Sirius sent a crooked grin at his friend across the table. "Harry's a good kid, but he doesn't seem very articulate, does he?"   
  
"He's sick," Lupin said with a shrug, pushing back his chair and standing. "I don't think you see him enough, Padfoot."   
  
Nodding in agreement, the two men took their coffee mugs back with them to the basement. Forgotten, the booklet remained on the table.   
  
*****  
  
When Harry finally emerged from the shower, he was surprised to see that the line outside the bathroom consisted only of Ginny. He wasn't even sure if she was in line for the bathroom, seeing as she was wearing a green swimsuit and inching around the hallway on her stomach. Upon seeing Harry, she wriggled her way over and hissed at him before inching past him and into the bathroom. Puzzling out Ginny's behaviour was a difficult task at the best of times, and Harry didn't really fancy trying it when his head ached so badly. He set out to find clothing suitable for a day when he felt so nasty.   
  
What he ended up with, was a pair of flannel pajamas that had been Dudley's, so the red material was pinned at his waist and pooled around his thin body. Over that he wore his newest Weasley sweater. On his feet a pair of thick black socks were bunched around his ankles and covered in house slippers. He completed the ensemble by draping his duvet over his shoulders like a cloak. Ready to face the day, since his second attempt at sleep had failed, he headed back to the kitchen to get a mixing bowl as a puke bucket just in case.   
  
Passing the living room, he glimpsed Snape staring vacantly at the television. He too was wearing comfort clothes. In this case, black jogging bottoms and a T-shirt proclaiming 'Dark Wizards Kick Ass!' Snape had sworn on numerous occasions that the T-shirt was left over from his old death-eater days, a statement somewhat belied by Voldemort's denial of ever having seen the T-shirt before coming to the houseshare. Snape looked rather pitiful, clutching his cauldron in his lap, just in case. Feeling an actual pang of sympathy for the man, the first one ever, Harry trudged on into the kitchen in search of toast or something equally uncomplicated, which he could throw up later. At the table, instead of Sirius and Remus, he found Hermione laying with her face pressed up against the Formica worktop.   
  
"You dead?" Harry managed as he scrunched two pieces of bread into the toaster.   
  
Hermione lifted her head, with difficulty. The leaflet her head had been resting on was now stuck to her cheek. She peeled it off and threw it in the general direction of the bin. It fluttered off to the left and landed in the sink, instead.  
  
"Erg... uhhh."   
  
Hermione's lack of witty conversation, added to the fact that she was wearing shell suit bottoms, a giant sweatshirt bearing the legend 'British Dental Association' and rainbow toe socks, suggested to Harry that she was in the same predicament as him. "I guess you don't want toast then?"  
  
Covering her mouth and widening her eyes, Hermione whimpered and pulled a huge saucepan closer to her, then shoved it away again just as quickly, since it still had a faint odour of eye of newt.   
  
As he was sure that he would be forced to vomit if Hermione did, Harry busied himself with pouring a glass of water and throwing his blackened toast onto a plate.   
  
"Has anybody seen Ginny?" Ron asked as he listlessly entered the kitchen in his pajamas. "Ooh, you two look like I feel."   
  
"If you feel like your stomach wants to burst out of your bellybutton, your brain hurts and you can't feel your teeth, we're right there with you, mate. Oh and Ginny was in the bathroom last I saw her, " Harry answered, taking a seat across from Hermione who had progressed into moaning in pain under her breath.   
  
Ron scrunched up his face in thought. "She's not there now, Malfoy jimmied open the lock when no one answered his shouts and threats. The window was open though."   
  
"Maybe you should ask Hagrid then," Hermione suggested, though the words must have unsettled her stomach because she immediately began moaning again and shaking.   
  
"Come to think of it... Ginny was crawling around in her bathing suit this morning. Maybe you ought to look for her before she hurts herself, " Harry said around nibbling on his toast.   
  
"She's not sick, so she'll be fine." Ron headed for the sink to get a drink of water. He found Sirius and Lupin's discarded leaflet and made the mistake of fishing it out and reading it.  
  
Harry watched as Ron's eyes got very round. He was almost knocked over as Ron lurched from the room and raced for the stairs. As the sound of his frantic footsteps faded, Harry heard the unmistakable sound of vomiting from above, closely followed by the sound of outraged shrieking which usually indicated the destruction of one of Draco's dresses.  
  
Hermione picked up the kitchen tongs and carried the open leaflet over to the bin, but not before Harry had got a glimpse of some of the pictures inside it. Hermione had fallen asleep on that leaflet! Katie Bell had once told him that if you slept with a book under your pillow you absorbed its contents during the night. He'd tried revising that way and knew it didn't work, but he couldn't help wondering what kind of dreams sleeping on that leaflet would give you.   
  
Harry looked at his toast, then pushed it away in disgust.  
  
***  
  
Snape glared at the diary room camera, cauldron still clutched defensively in his hands. His scowl would have been frightening if his hair hadn't been in two matching plaits. "I don't need to justify my actions to that lot, do you hear me? My decisions are precise and my actions are deliberate. I'm a very intelligent man, and I have a dark past. Do you understand me?"  
  
The small room fell into a dignified silence, or would have if Snape hadn't begun toying with one of his pig tails. " My original intention was to wear one plait, for convenience and to keep it off my neck. But that Ginny Weasley," Snape bit out the words, "tried to attack my back more than once fearing it was a serpent. The girl's quite mad, I still have the marks."  
  
Sneering around the room Snape rose and crossed his arms across his chest, plaits swinging with the movement. "This hairstyle is just as convenient, albeit less socially accepted. If they knew me at all they'd know that I don't care for conventional attitudes. I have a dark past, did I mention that?   
  
***  
  
By lunchtime, most of the household had assembled in the living room. Nobody felt like eating, but they'd all gravitated towards the same room on the principle that misery loves company. They were all trading stories about illness... well, all except Ginny, who was still nowhere to be found.  
  
"I once h-heard that if you c-crumble an aspirin into a g-glass of Seven Up, then h-heat it in the microwave and d-d-drink it. It'll cure you instantly."  
  
There was a round of groans in response to Quirrell's suggestion.  
  
"That's disgusting!"  
  
"When I was little, my mom would make me these vitamin C drinks whenever I was ill," said Hermione. "They were these horrible sachets of chalky powder that went all greasy when you poured the water on. It was like drinking cooking oil except every so often you'd get this pocket of powder that hadn't been mixed in and practically choke to death."  
  
Ron snorted, rudely. "If you think that's bad you should try growing up in a wizarding house. I've got four words for you: Madam Malefica's Magical Malady Remedy."  
  
Everybody but Harry and Hermione winced reflexively.  
  
"Actually, there's one thing that's guaranteed to clear a cold right up," Snape said. "I'll make up a batch if you like."  
  
"Don't!" Said the others with one voice.  
  
"You don't even know what I was suggesting, yet!"  
  
Harry fixed him with a steely gaze.  
  
"Was the main ingredient eye of newt by any chance?"  
  
"As a matter of fact, it was." In spite of the faces everybody was making, Snape ploughed on. "Eye of newt boosts the immune system!"  
  
Fortunately, Snape didn't hear Harry's reply, since Quildemort, who had been sniffling all morning, suddenly sneezed from both heads at once. This immediately started an argument between Draco and Voldemort on the importance of people with two faces carrying two hankies at a time so they didn't cover other people's belongings with snot.   
  
  
  
***  
  
Hagrid, blissfully unaffected by the illness plaguing the rest of the household, awoke to see a pair of bare feet hovering over his head. After a moment's thought, he realized the feet were attached to Ginny, who was dangling from the drainpipe on the side of the house, dressed in only a swimming costume and hissing furiously.  
  
"Are you all right there, Ginny?"  
  
The hissing stopped. Ginny seemed rather surprised to see him.  
  
"Yes, thank you, Hagrid."  
  
He pondered this for a moment, then decided he must still be dreaming, so he closed his eyes again.  
  
***  
  
Back inside the house, the smell of eye of newt hung thickly in the air. Snape had followed through on his promise to brew up a cold cure, despite the household's adamant refusals. Dumbledore, who was lying in his hammock watching horse-racing on Channel Five, showed no physical signs of illness. Only the absence of the sweet wrappers that usually surrounded his hammock bore silent testament to the fact that he too was feeling under the weather.  
  
Hermione had progressed from lethargic whimpering, to full out gut-clutching on the floor and emitting moans that could aptly be described as a warped version of an emu death-cry. The smell of Snapes' cure was doing bad things to the house-share. Draco alone kept his cool, subscribing to the belief that vomiting was unattractive so he wouldn't do it.  
  
"How does this 7-up and aspirin remedy work exactly," the blonde mused, despite the fact that Quildemort had retreated to the cupboard under the stairs, where dual sneezing could be heard every few minutes.  
  
"It's a lost cause, Malfoy. No one wants to venture toward that smell," Harry said, jerking his finger toward the kitchen. The ammonia smell was more potent than usual.  
  
"This sick thing is not working for me," Draco whined, crossing his arms and glaring off into space. "There has to be a cure that doesn't involve eye of newt."  
  
"Sirius made a suggestion this morning, before you lot got up," Harry said thoughtfully, rubbing idly at his sweaty face. He was at that eternal sick quandary: Too hot for the sweater, but without it he'd be prone to chills.  
  
He was very close to admitting that the universe, in fact, hated him.  
  
Ron paled noticeably at Sirius' name. "It wasn't_ well_ gross was it?"  
  
Hermione curled up tighter into a fetal ball, glazed eyes glued to the television screen. Harry resisted the urge to prod her with something, seeing as though her moaning had promptly died out. Seeing as though he didn't have anything sufficiently long enough to poke her with, this thought was abandoned and he was forced to explain the idea to Ron.  
  
"He told me to steam it out, in the bathroom."  
  
"Ok, let's get to it," Draco said with a commanding tone, jumping to his feet. "To the bathroom, we've got to steam it out."  
  
"Dunno_ if that will_ work", Hermione muttered from the floor under the coffee table, only her brightly colored toe socks were readily visible. "Will help the symptom_. Not the cause_ ugh_"  
  
Draco leaned over the coffee table, and looked Hermione in the eye. "Do you want to ingest something that is ripe with eye of newt?"  
  
Looking stricken, Hermione pulled herself up off of the floor with a grimace. "To the bathroom then?"  
  
Lined up in a row, Draco, Harry, Ron and Hermione were huddled up against the side of the tub. The shower curtain was pulled back and the spray was hot and on full. The four were dressed in bathrobes, silver silk on Draco, red linen on Hermione, green terry-cloth on Harry, and a pink fluffy concoction on Ron. All in all they looked like the cast of a very deranged Japanese tea ceremony, or at the or at the very least escapees from the nearest loony bin.  
  
"I'm just getting wet," Hermione complained, resting her head on the edge of the tub and catching the leer that Malfoy sent her way. "It's all hot in here."  
  
"What did you think steam implied?" Draco drawled, kneeling perfectly on the rug. "I will admit, that this is the worst steam room I've ever been in."  
  
"It's the best we could do," Harry said, tapping on the porcelain.  
  
Draco smirked. "You wouldn't know high class if it smacked you upside that scarred head of yours. Now the villa the family weekends at for Easter, you could lose a bludger in that steam room. At least that's what my father said when I became locked in there_"  
  
A disturbing look crossed Draco's face and Harry decided it was best to look away and make no sudden movements. On his other side, Ron, who had kept hitting the water with his palm and splashing him, nudged the trash bin over the floor vent with his foot. "I think I can still smell it all the way up here."  
  
"Stop getting me wet, git," Harry mumbled, pushing Rons head under the spray. Looking more ridiculous than normal, Ron pushed his sopping hair out of his face and shoved Harry into Hermione. Immediately Hermione shoved Harry into Ron, looking positively green at the movement.  
  
"Do you two really want me to throw up on you?"  
  
The two boys glared at her, which was becoming increasingly hard seeing as though the room was becoming thick with steam. Seeing as though he couldn't see anything anyway, Harry removed his glasses and stared off into steamy, space. That was until someone's hand began to molest his ass in a not so subtle way.   
  
"Hermione," Harry hissed, his voice low. "Are you touching me?"  
  
"No."  
  
With a sigh Harry turned to his right and punched Ron on the shoulder, causing him to lean into the rushing water. "I am really beginning to think all you Weasleys are as messed up as Draco says."  
  
"What'd I do?" Ron asked, once again soaking wet. Harry refused to answer, but to at that point Hermione shrieked and the unmistakable sound of a slap filled the room.  
  
"Pervert! You didn't touch me at all Draco Malfoy!"  
  
Dracos snickering turned into a cough, then a gag. "I think I am going to be sick."  
  
Despite the general queasiness of the lot, Harry, Hermione and Ron squashed back against the wall away from him. This motion however brought them face to face with Ginny who, still wearing her swimsuit, was crawling across the toiled with her feet still stuck out the window. Locking eyes with Hermione, seeing as though her face was about three centimeters from the other girls, Ginny grinned and said, "ShhhSHHhHhsssssssss!"  
  
From the other side of the room came the sound of retching. Prodding Hermione in the back Harry replaced his glasses on his face and muttered, "Suddenly eye of newt sounds.. appealing."  
  
***  
  
To the universal amazement of those involved, Snape's cure actually worked, although it had taken several attempts before most of them had been able to ingest it, much less keep it down long enough for any curative effects to take place.  
  
With the household restored to full health, they had retired to the lounge in order to avoid Snape's truly unbearable smugness. Dumbledore was in the middle of a Shortland Street marathon, but had been overruled and the screen was now filled with John McCrick gesticulating furiously.  
  
"What's going on with that bloke's sideburns?" Ron asked. "They look like they're trying to eat his face."  
  
"He always looks like that," said Hermione dismissively. "Now shut up, I want to hear about the horses."  
  
"Okay, but what about the glasses then?" Ron persisted unwisely. "My Mum used to do that to our mittens when I was younger, so we wouldn't lose them. Every time we got new mittens she'd run a length of wool between them and thread them through our coats. At least, she used to..."  
  
Draco snorted.   
  
"What you mean, Weasley, is that she never stopped, but you feel too embarrassed to explain that you still wear mittens on a string."  
  
"No, I mean that she used to do it, until the time Fred and George knotted their mittens together and tried to hang Percy from the third floor banister."  
  
Draco gave Ron a searching look.  
  
"There are times when I'm glad I'm an only child. Siblings send you weird."  
  
The others nodded in wholehearted agreement, except for Dumbledore, who claimed that he was perfectly normal, in spite of having a younger brother. A large amount of surreptitious eye-rolling ensued.  
  
"And of course, " continued Draco, "since you Weasleys have about ten times the normal number of siblings, it stands to reason that you're ten times as bonkers.  
  
Ron's half hearted denial would probably have carried more weight if Ginny hadn't chosen that precise moment to crawl into the lounge on her stomach, alternately hissing at her brother and bitching about the carpet burns on her elbows. Ron wisely decided to change the subject back to John McCrick.  
  
"Anyway, all I was trying to say is that the commentator bloke looks a bit weird. He's got all that crazy facial hair and the odd glasses, plus his clothes don't really match and he talks a load of rubbish."  
  
Voldemort looked from John McCrick to Dumbledore and started giggling uncontrollably. Affecting not to notice, Dumbledore unwrapped another lemon sherbert and smiled at Ron condescendingly.  
  
"Perhaps his attire is a little unusual, but he is certainly an expert in his field. They do say that true geniuses are always slightly eccentric."  
  
"So you must fit into that category, you're showing all the signs," Draco offered, looking from the slightly rocking hammock to the half eaten sweets embedded in the long white beard to the elder wizard's face. The more he thought about it, the more he could imagine a much younger Dumbledore with nasty sideburns, perfecting his double talk and working on his omniscient act. It had to be an act, right?   
  
Dumbledore regarded the boy, noting his slightly unfocused look. "In my younger days, it wasn't unknown for Nicholas and I to spend a little time on horses."  
  
"Spend time on horses the way your brother spends time on goats, or some other way?" Voldemort snickered out, causing Ron and Harry to exchange looks.  
  
Draco however, was not put off his seemingly genius idea. "I imagine you got rather good at predicting who would win."  
  
"It is a game of odds and probability, my favourite kind of wager to be honest. It was a method that Nicholas perfected, while I came away with some moderate skill."  
  
"Fancy a wager, then?" Draco tried to infuse his tone with sincerity, but he was so unaccustomed to producing that emotion that he ended up sounding sick to his stomach. The truth was he couldn't lose, Rico and Juan had been slipping him the racing papers for weeks along with tips and rumours about possible set ups and sketchy dealings. All he had to do in return was make sure things in the house share remained insane. The repairmen were making a killing.  
  
Either Dumbledore wasn't aware of the plotting of the young Slytherin, or else he knew something no one else did so he took the challenge. Looking seriously at the television set quickly, he looked back at Draco with a benign smile. "I would be surprised if Shergar II didn't take the kitty in the 4th race. I believe we haven't agreed on the exact terms of the wager, what do you say young Malfoy?"  
  
Draco frowned, for the first time in his life it was with difficulty. Inside he was squealing like a little girl who had gotten a pony, a tiara and Beach Bingo Barbie for her Birthday. If he wasn't careful megalomaniacal giggle, followed by ominous finger wiggling was going to bubble to the surface. In he 4th odd were on Flying Snail, almost unanimously. Shergar II was unreliable, quirky and more than a bit odd for a horse. The parallel between Dumbledore and the horse was not lost on him, and while it was enough to make him suspicious he easily ignored it.   
  
"Let's say… 1000 Galleons reflective of the calculated odds? My money is on Flying Snail… I sure fancy that name."  
  
Harry's face contorted as he tried to come up with a snide or witty comment on that remark, but failing to do so he returned his attention to the television.  
  
"A fine wager," Dumbledore said while extending his hand regally from the hammock for Draco to shake, "and just in time for the 4th, how delightful."  
  
As the gate opened, everyone eyes were riveted to the screen. Everyone but Ginny, that is, as she was busy applying disinfectant cream to her knees, elbows, chin and palms with intermittent hisses. On the screen the horses were off and the commentator was working himself up toward a minor coronary attack. Draco was at the edge of his seat, grasping the couch so hard that his knuckle were stark white and he was seriously endangering his manicure.  
  
Dumbledore was distractedly picking the sweets out of his beard and popping them in his mouth for another attempt. Similarly Snape was popping eye of newt into his mouth from the container, a maneuver that drew repulsed stares from the rest of the non-betting house members. There was something wrong and more than a little worrisome about a person who could take the dreaded ingredient straight.  
  
On the couch Draco was grinning madly, perilously close to letting the laughter and finger movements to have free reign. He was going to win! He would have scammed the, arguably, greatest sorcerer the world had ever known!   
  
With only seconds to go Flying Snail had just rounded the bend and was thundering towards the finish line, lengths away from the competition when the television suddenly turned off. Draco turned to glare at Dumbledore accusingly, as he suspected the older wizard wouldn't be averse to pulling out the plug if it meant saving his image as an infallible eccentric. It was at that point, however that all the lights went out as well. Ignoring Draco's anguished shrieks, Hermione went and glanced out of the window.  
  
"It's not just us, the whole street's got no power. Has anybody got a torch or some candles or something? I assume Lumos isn't going to work..."  
  
"They've got candles in the basement," said Ron in a gloomy tone. "I've seen 'em."  
  
"There's a camper lamp in the cupboard under the sink," offered Harry. "It runs on meths, I think."  
  
"I'll get it!" Ginny hissed, before Draco launched himself across the room in the direction of her voice and managed to sit on her.  
  
"I think, on reflection, that we won't let the lunatic near the methylated spirits and naked flames, actually. Potter, get the lamp!"  
  
"What did your last slave die of?"  
  
"Insubordination."  
  
Harry, made some huffing and puffing noises, but nevertheless headed off to get the lamp. Unfortunately, in the dark, he opened the wrong door and plunged headfirst down the basement stairs. Ron, the first one to realise what had happened, made a half-hearted attempt to have his friend, by chucking the Firebolt down the stairs after him and yelling "Catch."  
  
The upshot of his quick thinking wasn't that Harry came soaring out of the basement uninjured, but rather that when he landed in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the staircase, a rather heavy broomstick came hurtling after him and hit him on the head.  
  
"Sorry Harry!" said, Ron, instinctively backing away from the stairs. "If I pull the curtains back you should have enough light to get back up though, it's a full moon tonight."  
  
As it happened, Harry was already aware that it was a full moon. There was something about being six inches away from a slavering werewolf that gave you an unerring perspective on these things.  
  
"Waaaaaaaaaah!"  
  
Harry came charging out of the basement, just as the power came back on. This meant that the other occupants of the lounge got a full view of Lupin bounding out after him. Popcorn went flying as everybody dived out of the way. Ron and Hermione both leaped up onto the windowsill and attempted to hide behind the curtains. Draco pulled the coffee table over to form a makeshift barricade and ducked behind it with Quildemort. Snape squealed like a little girl and dived under the sofa to have flashbacks. Harry skidded on the popcorn and after crashing to the floor, crawled under the sofa to hide beside Snape. Dumbledore turned into a small red parrot and flew up to perch on the light fitting beside Hedwig and Pigwidgeon.  
  
"I didn't know Dumbledore was an animagus!" said Hermione.  
  
"No, neither did I," was the blithe response from near the ceiling.  
  
Ginny, meanwhile had opted not to hide anywhere, but was instead lying on the floor in the middle of the room and fixing Lupin with her most terrifying and hypnotic stare. The wolf was growling at her and had just readied himself to pounce, when Sirius bounded out of the basement, transformed into his human form and began to strangle Lupin into submission, with a strip of lacy black fabric.  
  
The others began to emerge from their hiding places, until Hermione took a closer look and strode over to Sirius with a dangerous expression.  
  
"Is that my bra? GIVE IT BACK!"  
  
She snatched the wisp of material away, from Sirius with an aggrieved air and stalked out of the room. Unfortunately this meant that Lupin, who had been choked almost to the brink of unconsciousness, shook himself awake and leapt for Snape. Since Snape had been frantically trying to squish himself back under the sofa, it was a most unfortunate part of his anatomy that presented itself to the hungry werewolf. It was only through the characteristically Gryffindor efforts of Ron, that Snape was able to avoid a rather embarrassing bite.  
  
Ron's actions were so characteristically Gryffindor, Draco explained afterwards, because they combined unselfish bravery with complete and utter stupidity. Upon seeing Lupin wake up, Ron had launched himself from the windowsill and onto the werewolf's back. The next few moments were more chaotic than usual as Ron held on for dear life and was jerked around the living room by an increasingly furious werewolf. Sirius had transformed back into his dog form, and was frantically attempting to control Lupin. Snape and Harry were having a joint fit of hysterics under the sofa and Draco and Quildemort were sharing what was left of the popcorn, from their makeshift fort, so it was only Dumbledore who saw Lupin run straight into the dining room table at top speed, knocking himself out and propelling Ron onwards through the window, with a fistful of fur clutched in each hand.  
  
There was a loud "ZAP!" as Ron found his flight impeded by the invisible force-field. Harry wrestled with his conscience for a moment, before throwing the Firebolt out of the window and onto Ron's head.  
  
*****  
  
Padding down the stairs, Harry fought down another wave of nausea and silently cursed the throbbing in his head. He was going to have a bump for weeks where the Firebolt had hit him. The nausea was the ironic, and yet somehow predictable result of the cure for yesterday's nausea.  
  
He wandered into the living room to see Draco sitting on the couch channel surfing with a look of frustrated anguish. Evidently he had not yet been able to find any coverage mentioning the name of the winning horse from yesterday's race, despite not having slept at all that night. Dumbledore was grinning from the hammock and desperately trying to piece together the plot of that week's Shortland Street from the split second glimpses that flashed past every time Draco hit the right channel.  
  
Ginny was sitting cross-legged on the sofa, scribbling in her notebook. She seemed to be relatively stable today, so Harry went over and sat beside her, sliding instinctively into his favourite inverted position. He was just nodding of back to sleep, when he heard Draco ask Ginny what all that business with the swimsuit had been about yesterday.  
  
"None of your business, Malfoy," she told him serenely and continued with her drawing.  
  
"I just wondered if you were trying another of Lockhart's crackpot therapies, that's all." Draco' voice slid sideways into a smug, mid-Atlantic drawl. "To conquer your fears and become as all-around wonderful as me, you must first be the snake."  
  
"No," said Ginny, calmly. "I was just bored."  
  
Draco stuck his tongue out at her and was rewarded with a flash of her notebook, where she had apparently been drawing a snake eating a racehorse. The stick figure is the background clutching his empty pockets and weeping, looked rather familiar and Draco's reaction was predictable. So predictable that Ginny managed to duck in plenty of time and the remote control Draco had hurled went smashing straight into Harry's scar.  
  
Draco would later be pleased with this shot, which would have been worth one thousand points in a normal game of Peg Potter, at the time he was more concerned with escaping the outraged boy who lived, who was chasing him around the house wielding a broomstick.  
  
Once the room had been vacated, Dumbledore pulled the morning paper from beneath him on the hammock and began to chuckle, then to guffaw, then to giggle megalomaniacally and wiggle his fingers.  
  
Then he got down of the hammock and went to fix himself some toast for breakfast.


	8. Infomercials Laid Bare

_This fic is dedicated to Lady Alyssa and Random Flatmate/Dent who wrote the awesome 'Bagenders' and gave us permission to rip off some of their work in this fic._

**Infomercials Laid Bare**

"What exactly are you doing?"

Harry Potter looked up, startled. It took a moment before he realised the voice had been Draco's. Having come down the stairs for a drink of water, Draco was sporting a silky pair of silver pyjama bottoms and a severe case of bed-head. Not that Draco's bed-head could hold a candle to the messiness of Harry's hair at any time of day, but as it was 3am Draco felt he had a reasonable excuse for his current state of dishevelment.

Realizing he was in no position to laugh, with a permanent case of bed-head and too-small pyjama bottoms decorated with cartoon golden snitches, Harry turned away from the Draco and back towards the television.

"I couldn't sleep. Ginny kept sleep-walking into my room and shrieking 'SNAKE' at me. It was driving me bonkers."

"Not a long trip, eh Potty?" Draco smirked at the square-eyed zombie on the couch and made his way to the kitchen for a glass of water.

All the other housemates were sleeping, although every once in a while the sound of Ginny having a psychotic episode broke the silence. To escape this, Harry had turned to the lifeline of all insomniacs: the early morning infomercial. At the moment the programme was promoting a star shaped waffle-iron, that frankly reminded Harry too much of Ginny's ill-fated bid for house-share dictator. However the three simple payments of 9.99 were seriously tempting.

"That thing makes star-shaped waffles?" Draco showed some interest as he sat next to Harry on the couch. Wincing in pain, he pulled a small pink kazoo from under his bottom and tossed it onto the coffee table. Goddamn Dumbledore and his kazoo! "It's so cheap, too."

Harry nodded, his eyes glued to the screen. "You should have seen what was on earlier. They had these knives that can cut through steel pipes. If I'd ordered them I could have got a second set free!"

Draco looked impressed.

"Then there were these things you can cook eggs in the microwave with. Egg-Waves, I think they were called..." Harry narrowed his eyes in thought. "Everything is so cheap, why don't Muggles buy everything off the telly?"

"The only people who are ever up this late are very, very drunk", said Draco with quiet authority.

"How would you know? You hate Muggles."

Draco shrugged. "Doesn't mean we don't have a telly. My mother's always up late watching wizarding game-shows and the home-shopping network. It drives my father crazy when she buys those tacky porcelain clowns, but it's better that she's on her medi-potions and buying cheap trinkets, than off her meds and on my back. She's insane when she's not heavily tranquilised."

Harry tried to stifle an unsympathetic snigger, but the mental image of Malfoy Manor bedecked with tacky china animals and gaudy candle holders was too much for him. "Malfoy, I'm officially terrified of your mother."

"I'll kick your ass if you talk about my mother again, Potter," growled Draco, evidently regretting his momentary candour. Then his scowl was suddenly replaced by an evil grin. "Anyway, it works out. I can get away with anything I want, and I've got this."

From his pocket Draco pulled a small plastic card that read 'Gringotts Black Diamond Mastercard'. "She never knew it was missing, and nothing I could put on this thing would be worse than her shopping sprees."

Harry regarded Draco with barely disguised avarice. His attention was - for the first time in hours - not on the television. "I think we should order the waffle-iron. There's no way Snape could put eye of newt in waffles."

"I wouldn't put anything past him," Draco said with a shudder, but nonetheless picked up the phone and placed the order. Next-day delivery of a waffle-iron was soon followed by requests for next-day delivery of a long handled paint roller, the Egg-Wave, a machine to vacuum-seal cans and plastic bags, a set of ginsu knives, and an ab-roller.

By dawn the infomercials were winding down and were about to be replaced by morning television. On the couch Harry had adopted his favourite pose for sleeping: feet on the headrest and head on the floor. Draco - too tired to take advantage of the pose for a spirited game of "Peg Potter" - was just staring blearily at the television screen when he jumped up and knocked Harry off the couch.

Harry landed on the floor with a resounding OOMPH. Standing up, he rubbed his neck and glared at Draco. "What was that for?"

"Look at this; we could get a degree through the mail."

Turning to the TV with interest, Harry watched as a fading American television star from the 1970s sold mail order degrees. Scratching the number into the edge of the coffee table, Harry turned to Draco. "Who is that woman, and why does she scare me?"

"Sally Struthers," Draco read from the screen. "I want a degree."

"Me, too."

Picking up the phone, the Slytherin grinned as someone answered. "Yes, we'd like to get our degrees in something... What? Hold on."

Looking at Harry, Draco put his palm over the mouthpiece of the phone. "What do we want to get our degrees in?"

Harry shrugged and in an acrobatic manoeuvre turned himself upside down on the couch to sleep. Draco glared and hissed, "Well you're no help."

To the phone he said, "What are our options? -- Okay, one of those. -- Yeah, that too."

Having given his mailing information and credit card number, Malfoy hung up the phone with a smirk. "Rush delivery for two starter packets, Potter."

"What for?" Harry mumbled.

"You're going to get a degree in Television Repair and I am going to get one in Paralegal." Draco smiled arrogantly before closing his eyes, too sleepy to move.

"How come you get Paralegal?" Harry whined.

"Because I was the one who phoned up."

Harry nodded slightly, which was rather uncomfortable on his neck, given his upside down position. "Makes sense..."

A moment passed in silence before Harry spoke again. "What the hell _is_ Paralegal?"

----------

Scooping up the mail from where it had fallen through the slot, Hermione idly flipped through the letters. Walking into the kitchen, and stepping over the crumpled form of Ginny who was lying motionless on the floor, she sat at the table and tossed the bills at Snape. Getting no reaction other than a surly grunt, Hermione sipped her third cup of coffee for the morning.

"What I want to know is how these bills are getting paid," Hermione finally said, breaking the silence and getting Snape's attention. He looked like hell, something Hermione attributed to consuming too much eye-of-newt, although she didn't dare voice that opinion out loud. Then again, another reason he looked a little... _off_, could be because of the very strange pigtails he'd begun wearing his hair in. Sadly, that was another topic that Hermione did not quite have the courage to breach.

Motioning to the bills, Snape said, "Second notices never seem to come, although I know well enough to not put my faith in anything so ambiguous. I'm keeping meticulous records of who owes what, in the event that our captor shows himself."

Hermione grumbled and put her empty coffee cup down.

"Given that we're captives, they can sod off don't you think? I'm not paying a penny. The way I see it, I'm owed money due to the mental baggage alone."

They looked at one another appraisingly and decided to let that subject pass. Snape turned back to the bills, but stopped when he came to two identical orange folders bearing the names "Dick Hurtz" and "I. P. Freely".

"POTTER!"

Harry - who had been sleeping on the couch in his trademark position - stirred and promptly over-balanced, falling headfirst onto the floor. Grunting in his sleep, Draco spread out on the newly emptied portion of the couch. Rubbing his head, Harry stood and glanced into the kitchen at Snape, who was waving the folders in the air, then at Draco, who was still sleeping peacefully on his stomach. It was really too much of a temptation to pass up, despite Snape's obvious impatience.

Taking hold of the back of Malfoy's pyjama bottoms, Harry was delighted and disgusted to note that Draco didn't wear undergarments to bed. Despite this shooting the shit out his theory that Draco wore women's underwear, it worked out for what he was going to do. Counting down in his head from three, Harry jerked up Draco's pyjama trousers until they were level with the blond boy's naked shoulder. Instantly Draco was awake and jumping up as though he were on fire.

"YOU WANKER POTTER! I'm going to bloody..."

Lunging at Harry, Draco abruptly sank to his knees with a whimper and eased his pyjamas out of his ass crack.

Raising his fist into the air, Harry grinned and danced around as only one who is wedgie free can. "I am victorious! 100 points in my new favourite game, 'Maim Malfoy'!"

Grinning once more at the whimpering boy, Harry took this opportunity to dart into the kitchen and deal with Snape. When Draco followed suit, limping slightly, Harry ducked behind Hermione and began to laugh maniacally. With a glare in Harry's general direction, Draco headed for the refrigerator - a picture of injured dignity.

"Well, Mr. Potter, I see that your juvenile sense of humour is as disgusting as ever," Snape sneered in a silky voice. "If you could refrain in the future from subjecting the more rational occupants of this house to your whims..."

Tossing the two big envelopes across the table, Snape motioned with an impatient look for him to read the addresses. When he did, however, he just pushed them back across the table with a shrug. "I didn't do that."

Hermione, catching sight of the addresses, stifled a giggle. Snape was not amused.

"Who did this, then?"

"I did," Draco said nonchalantly as he picked up the folders and eased himself into a chair. "I ordered these last night. It's our degree work, Potter. You're mental if you think you're gonna get yours now, though."

----------

"Look what Potter did to my flawless skin." Leaning over the armchair in the diary room, Draco had dropped his kecks and was exhibiting his lily white buttocks to the camera. After a minute of silence for inspection and a couple of waves of his bum in the air, Draco pulled up his pants and sat down with a wince. "He ruined me!"

Narrowing his grey eyes, he frowned. "And not like that, I know what you're thinking pervert. Hmph. As if I'd ever let Potter near my ass in that capacity. No way."

With a full-on glare, Draco crossed his arms over his chest. "Nuh-uh."

Then looking right and left, despite his knowledge that he was the only person in the room, he turned and mooned the camera again. This time he was giggling like a little girl. Secure in the knowledge that no one would ever see the diary room tapes.

----------

On the third floor, Ron was being subjected to a rather vague lecture from his sister.

"Something's coming," said Ginny darkly. Her sleep had been more troubled than usual for the past few nights by terrifying and possibly prophetic dreams.

"What sort of something?" Ron asked, pulling an acid green T-shirt over his head and hunting around the room for a clean crash helmet.

"I'm not sure yet."

"It's not another ess-en-ay-kay-ee, is it?"

Ginny shot him a poisonous look.

"Don't patronise me."

"All right, I was just asking."

"I woke up in the kitchen doorway this morning. The night before Hagrid found me wandering in the garden. You know what it means when I start sleepwalking."

"That we need to start locking your room from the outside when you go to bed?"

"It means something's going to _happen_," Ginny insisted. "Why don't you take me seriously?"

Ron thought this was rather unfair. If any member of the household wasn't treated seriously, it was him. People took Ginny seriously, if only out of a healthy sense of self preservation. They took Hermione seriously, because she was clever. Harry because he was the Boy Who Lived. Maybe Ron needed a 'thing' too?

He paused in his musings to realise Ginny was still glaring at him, waiting for an answer. What had the question been? Ron couldn't remember and decided to bluff his way out. Adopting his most reassuring tone, he reached out and ran a hand through Ginny's hair.

"Don't you worry your pretty little head about it."

To his surprise, Ginny gave him a thoroughly evil look and stomped from the room, pausing in the doorway to shout: "Fine, I'll go find somebody who _will_ listen. And I'd change that T-shirt if I were you, Ron Weasley. It looks like somebody threw up on it."

Ron watched her leave, thoroughly baffled. Then looked down at the T-shirt. Perhaps he _should_ rethink his outfit? Hey, maybe that could be his thing!

Hurriedly, Ron began to undress.

----------

While Draco had eventually been persuaded to let Harry open his degree pack, the wedgie related activities of that morning were by no means forgotten and the atmosphere in the kitchen remained tense.

Harry's face was scrunched up in thought. With one hand he was tapping a pencil, with the other he was trying to balance a second pencil between his nose and upper lip. He was failing with the lip thing and his tapping was driving Draco, who sat across the table from him, insane. Quildemort was leaning against the kitchen counter waiting for the explosion as Harry's taps started to coincide with Draco's brand new facial tick. Quildemort's desire for bloodshed was stymied however, as Ron chose that moment to stride into the kitchen, naked as the day he was born.

"Hiya."

Instantly two pencils dropped to the kitchen table, and a glass smashed as it slipped from Quirrell's hand. Ron merely smiled sunnily at the occupants of the kitchen and went to the refrigerator. Luckily the refrigerator shielded his nakedness from the boys at the table. Unfortunately for Voldemort, Ron decided he needed something on the bottom shelf and leaned over. With a shudder, Quildemort fled from the room.

Closing the door, Ron emerged with an apple and took a seat at the table. Harry was unable to form words at this point but Draco was always up for a challenge. "Forget something, Weasley?"

Ron looked confused, glanced back to see if he'd forgotten to shut the refrigerator all the way, then looked back to the smirking boy with a shrug. "Nope, I'm all set thank you."

Draco smirked, if possible, harder. "No, your clothes, dummy. Forget to pay for them, and had them taken away did you?"

Ron glared at Draco, then took a big bite out of his apple. "Nuhnn, Ihm a nhhuhdihst."

Harry and Draco exchanged glances, then looked back at the naked boy. "Excuse me?"

Swallowing the fruit, Ron cleared his throat and announced, "I've become a nudist."

At that, Harry began to choke but the blond merely snickered and said, "At least we know he's a natural redhead, now."

The choking on the other side of the table got ten times worse at that and Harry fell to the floor, jabbing himself in the chest trying to dislodge his own spit. When he finally recovered he sat back up, red faced and sweating and asked, "Why are you a nudist?"

"It's a lifestyle choice." Reducing the apple to its core, Ron hopped up, to the others' dismay and tossed the remainder of the fruit in the bin. Turning back to them he said, "I'm going to go watch some TV," and left the room.

There was a good five minutes of frozen silence before the two boys cracked up. Draco, leaning back in his chair, said, "That boy is a complete nutter."

Harry nodded in agreement, then looked sadly down at the packet of paper in front of him. "Malfoy, Television Repair is too hard. Why did this have to arrive first? I want some waffles."

"Waffles?" Hermione asked as she teetered into the room under the weight of a box. "This was on the front step, by the way. What did you order, bricks?"

Draco smirked. "It's nothing heavy, Granger. You'd better work on that muscle, or lack thereof. Is Snape not working you out enough?"

CLUNK-SMACK! The box hit the floor as Hermione's hand connected with the back of Draco's head. Shooting him a death glare, she stalked from the room leaving an amused Harry and an annoyed Draco to deal with the box. Watching Draco rub his head, Harry sighed wistfully. "I hope that's the waffle-iron."

"There are more important things at hand, Potter," Draco drawled. "And you know we can't make waffles until the Egg-Wave is here. It makes a meal."

With a dramatic sigh, Harry gave in and looked back to his packet of degree materials only to be interrupted by the doorbell. "What else are we expecting?"

Draco waved his hand dismissively. "Stuff."

"Indeed," Hermione huffed as she pushed three new boxes into the kitchen. Standing up properly she adjusted her shirt and kicked the nearest box. "Next time go and retrieve your own things, Malfoy."

"And miss seeing you look all flustered? I think not Granger."

Glaring at Draco seemed to be Hermione's only function as of late, but the effect was not lost. "There was another package, but Dumbledore seized it when he saw the shipping label."

"Which was?" Draco asked.

"Bert's Bodybuilding."

Putting his head in the cradle of his arms, Harry snorted into the table, while Draco looked momentarily stricken. Motioning toward the living room, he asked, "And nudie Weasley's in there, too?"

Suppressing a shudder, Hermione nodded.

"Perhaps we should stay in here for while?"

----------

Dumbledore regarded the small machine with interest. Two handlebars attached to a wheel seemed like such a small thing when compared to its grand promises of six-pack abs in under a month. He'd had six-pack abs before – a long time ago – and it was a certain nostalgia that moved him to pick up the device and... roll.

Ron chose this exact moment to walk in at the door to the living room. Dumbledore was mid-roll, weight on his toes

Ron was frozen. Paused awkwardly mid-step. All the hairs on his body were standing on end. Quite a sight, since he was still as naked as the day he was born. His brain was screaming at him to run, to hide, to do anything and everything to get him out of there. Instead he was dumbstruck on a level that he had never sunk to before.

In the middle of the living room, posed on tiptoe, arse in the air and gripping a garish contraption was Albus Dumbledore. In fact, Dumbledore was also frozen, regarding Ron from between his arms.

"Ronald, you are aware that you are lacking your clothes?"

Ron blinked.

"Yes, sir."

With an indulgent smile, Dumbledore returned to the task at hand. With an amazing show of muscle, he rolled forward and then backward to his previous position.

"Ten!"

All that greeted his gleeful proclamation was the sound of running feet and breaking glass.

In the kitchen, Harry, Draco and Hermione listened thoughtfully to the window being smashed.

"I reckon he did that naked," said Draco with a pained expression.

Hermione nodded. "There wasn't time to even put his crash helmet on, let alone clothes."

They sat in silence for a moment considering the potential injuries that can arise when a naked male throws himself through a plate glass window. Finally Hermione spoke...

"We should probably go see if he needs help or hospital or something."

"Excuse me," Dumbledore called from the living room. "Miss Granger? Mr Potter? Mr Malfoy? Some assistance, please."

----------

The packages had now begun to arrive thick and fast. Ginsu knives, a leaf blower, an electric belt-sander, a food processor, a pack of laser pens and a heavily discounted chainsaw were all delivered to the house in quick succession. (And just as quickly confiscated and hidden in the pantry by Snape, who wasn't keen to see how much havoc the others could cause with a chainsaw.)

Most notable, however, was the much anticipated waffle iron.

Snape hovered over the new appliance warily. Its appearance amongst Draco's many purchases had been largely ignored. Running one long finger over the smooth metal and Teflon insides, Snape stepped back and considered the possibilities. It was too shallow for anything soupy, and anything non-soupy was really not his forte. The problem was, however, that he couldn't get the damn thing to work.

In the grand tradition of hard-to-work appliances, it came with no instruction manual. The top part of the appliance that folded open kept snapping down on his hand and the knob on the surface refused to change the temperature, no matter where it was pointed. Having too much dignity to actually throw the machine across the room, the usually stoic Potions Master gave in to the urge to glare, shout at and then hit the unsuspecting appliance before giving up on it.

"Have you plugged it in, yet?" Harry asked hopefully from the kitchen doorway, earning a scowl from the frustrated man.

Looking again at the waffle iron, Snape spied the three-pronged plug sticking out of the back that he hadn't seen before. Pushing the plug into the wall socket he neatly explained to Harry that, "It keeps falling out. Muggle inventions are always so shoddy."

Harry accepted this dubious excuse solely out of a desire for waffles, but was distracted by the machine itself. "Um, Professor… Why is it hopping about like that?"

"That's what it's supposed to do, you ignorant boy," Snape bluffed, now eying the waffle iron that seemed to dance across the counter top. "They all do that when plugged in."

Reaching toward the appliance to stop its mad flight, Snape had to withdraw his arm quickly as it flapped open and tried to snap down on his hand. His close proximity to the iron told him that it was rather hot, while the snapping clued him into the fact that the iron was in fact acting strangely.

----------

"You never want to do things as a team anymore," Voldemort whined. Through strategic mirror placement, bother Quirrell and the Dark Lord were making their case to the diary room camera.

Quirrell frowned. "Y-you take me from granted. This is my body, y-you know!"

"Yours is it? This is a partnership! I feel trapped in a loveless sham. I'm a sorry excuse for a Dark Lord." Voldemort burst into tears.

Unable to hold his ground as tears, or what he sincerely hoped were tears, ran down his neck, Quirrell sighed. "I will m-make more of an effort."

Voldemort snuffled. "We can go back to the way it was?"

Quirrell nodded.

"Excellent." Instantly cheerful again, the Dark Lord grinned. "What are you still hanging about here for? That old wreck Dumbledore has an ab-roller in his beard and I fancy a shot at that Egg-wave!"

On the way downstairs, Quirrell found himself wishing - not for the first time - to fall and bash the back of his head in.

----------

"I told you that television repair was perfect for you," Draco said with a smirk as he smoothed the game-pad onto the floor.

From behind the television Harry snorted. "All I did was read the instructions on the box."

Dumbledore watched the proceedings with interest. This wasn't unusual in itself as he was always indulgent to the whims of his housemates. What was unusual was the fact that the brightly coloured ab-roller was firmly tangled in his beard and was showing no signs of moving anytime soon.

When Hermione had offered to cut the plastic contraption from his beard, the old wizard had only shook his head sagely and pronounced "That it would work itself out, there is no need to be hasty."

Hermione had been sceptical. In turn, Quildemort had been sat on the couch for more than an hour, slyly looking at his nemesis and giggling. Their had been no sign of Ron since his starkers swan dive, and it was with a view to maintaining the norm that the other boys had - upon receipt of the game system - implemented the framework for a massive Dance Dance Revolution tournament.

"First round," Draco announced, consulting his clipboard. "Ginny Weasley versus Harry Potter."

Sulkily Ginny took her position, followed by Harry. What followed was a hideously choreographed, no holds barred, techno-pop smack down. Feet flew. Then so did Ginny. Ostensibly, this was because a basilisk had appeared in the kitchen. In fact Ginny simply knew she was no match for the mad dance skillz of the boy-who-lived. Or so Harry claimed, and it was far from an idle boast. The same grace, speed and physical coordination Harry had brought to the Quidditch pitch before his incarceration were now turned to the slightly less respectable sport of Dance Dance Revolution.

Harry finished the track effortlessly and took his seat to a round of applause.

Next up was Ron versus Draco, in a highly entertaining match. To the popped up tunes of Duran Duran they were off. Draco not only had perfect rhythm, quickly stepping in time to the music, but he had a drastic advantage to Ron in that he could easily distinguish between his right and left. Ron was sadly left in the dust as he kept tripping up on his own feet. It didn't help that the glare of the neon flashes on screen were reflecting off his crash-helmet into his eyes and by the fact that he was still bare-ass naked. While that little fact was majorly disturbing to Draco, (truthfully it was the only thing that put him off his step) it was worse for Ron who was having some unforeseen difficulties with flailing and waggling.

Needless to say while their match was on everyone else had fled the room in terror.

After Draco had yelled that it was safe for them to come back in, Hermione and Quildemort took the floor and launched into a depressing version of Nori, Nori, Nori. Neither of the competitors was blessed with natural rhythm, but Hermione managed to keep her score out of negative numbers by watching the screen like a hawk and moving in a jerky and highly unflattering manner that at least managed to be fairly accurate.

The Dark Lord was not nearly so fortunate. His limbs were conspiring against him and this was not the exaggeration it might have been from one of the other players. Quirrell had decided that DDR was a stupid game and was attempting to sneak back to the safety of the sofa at every opportunity. Add to this the fact that Lord Voldemort had to play with his back to the screen and it was no surprise that his eventual score was truly miserable. He slunk back to the safety of the kitchen, swearing revenge.

Harry smiled encouragingly at Hermione as Draco stepped up beside her.

As Hermione neared the pad, Draco leered at her. "Now we all get to see the skills that only one man has seen before."

Hermione glared but was distracted by the thumping beat of J-Pop and the montage of half dressed Japanese schoolgirls that flooded the screen. It was this pervy image that made Draco miss the first step, the much loved right and left combo. From there it only got more complicated, the flashing arrows swimming before their eyes.

Draco knew he wasn't going to be able to get his footing back and despite Granger's overly technical approach and lack of rhythm he was in danger of losing. In a split second decision on his course of action, Draco chose to stop moving all together so that his side of the screen registered flashing misses and warnings. Everything fell into place perfectly. Hermione did a series of cross-board steps jerkily before chancing a look at the perfectly still Draco. The trap was sprung.

"This match is unfair, Granger. The rest of us haven't been training with nightly gymnastics. I'll wager you could stick your leg above your head. Plus I don't know what sort of rhythm Snape has been…"

He never got to finish his taunt, as Hermione launched herself at Draco, pulling his hair and forcing them to roll all over the game pads. They chanced a few perfect moves on the screen, but mostly they were misses and by the end of the song Draco was sporting a bloody nose and grasping a chunk of Hermione's hair. Needless to say their scores were equally miserable.

As there were no whistles about, the high hum of a kazoo rang through the air and Dumbledore waved an empty bag of Ready Salted crisps, "That's a red card for the two of you."

"If they're disqualified, does that mean I win by default?" Harry asked, with a hint of smugness.

"Doe, certainly dot!" said Malfoy with some difficulty. "We deed a replacement."

"I'd be more than happy to oblige." Dumbledore began climbing down from the hammock, however the unaccustomed weight on the end of his beard meant that he overbalanced and the ab-roller came careering out of his beard, hitting Ron in the solar plexus before careering back into Dumbledore's beard and lodging itself even more firmly than before.

"On reflection, Sir, I think maybe we should find somebody else."

"We could ask Hagrid," said Hermione doubtfully.

"Doe thank you, Granger. I don't want that dasty oaf breaking my dew toy."

"Then I do win," said Harry triumphantly. "If there's no other competitors, then I win by default."

"Not so fast, Potter!" came a silky voice from the direction of the kitchen. "I suppose I could lower myself to try your silly muggle game, if it would make you stop crowing for five minutes."

Scowling, Harry shifted his weight on the pad, dialling the difficulty level up to its hardest setting before Snape emerged from the kitchen, shrugging off his cloak and taking his place on the second dance mat. The words End of the Century appeared on screen as Snape and Harry both readied themselves.

"Okay, you little brat. Let's boogie."

3… 2… 1!

Loud apocalyptic music filled the room. The house shook with tension and the power of the surround-sound speakers that Draco had bought for precisely this sort of moment. The glass rattled in the windows. The dogs howled in the backyard and the owls froze, fluttering manically in mid air above the television. They were off, their blood pulsing in time with the music, their eyes riveted to the screen.

The rest of the house was riveted also, but for another reason. Firstly because under his robes, Snape had been wearing loose, sexy trousers and a very flattering muscle tank that proclaimed, "Ipanema Dance Contest 1978". Even more attention grabbing was the fact that he was good, so good that Harry was having a hard time catching up.

Each step Snape hit exactly on time, gracefully flowing from step to step. His precise movements wasted no time and exuded animal magnetism. Sweat was pouring down both their faces, saturating their clothes and mucking up the dance mat. With a flourish the song ended, to be replaced by the dual sound of heavy breathing.

On the screen the results flashed and a creepy man gravely pronounced, "FLAWLESS VICTORY."

Snape smirked. "Was that the best you've got, Potter? I suppose that makes me the champion."

Harry stood, thunderstruck and like all the other occupants of the room he watched as Snape gathered his robes and strode out of the room. "Did I just lose to Snape?"

"You really have kept him in shape, eh Granger?"

Draco tried to leer, but failed as Hermione stood up and smiled down at him. "No, he's always been in great physical shape. Pity about you and the baby fat."

----------

"When I said I wanted you to teach me, I actually meant I wanted to learn how to get a high score listing on Dance Dance Revolution."

Snape stared intently at her over the chessboard.

"I think this game is more suited to your natural talents."

"Meaning I have no rhythm, is that it?"

"No, meaning that you have all the skills that should make you a natural at strategy games. Now pay attention. The pawn may seem like an unimportant character, but in fact it has the potential to be the most powerful piece on the board."

Hermione tried to stifle a yawn and failed.

"I know all this. In case you'd forgotten, I've been playing this for years: muggle chess; wizard chess; life-sized, bash-your-brains-out, psycho chess! You name it, I've played it, now make your move!"

Snape pushed a pawn forward in the classic King's Opening. Hermione scowled at the board and tried to decide whether to counter with Caro-Kann or a French Defence. Her glance fell sideways and landed upon the waffle iron, which was currently sitting on the living room floor. Its wire had curled into an unusual shape. It seemed to spell out C5. Wait that was it! Hermione slid a pawn forwards to the C5 spot in a tricky Sicilian Defence. Snape countered by moving his Knight's pawn forward two spaces and her glance fell once again to the floor. The waffle iron's lead now spelt out B4. Smugly, Hermione reached out to slide her pawn diagonally. Snape would never know what had hit him.

Half an hour later and Snape couldn't see a way out. No matter how he moved, Hermione would checkmate him in four moves or less. He stared at Hermione in a temper. "It's mate, mate, mate, no matter what I do!"

As Hermione blushed to the roots of her bushy hair, Snape reflected that perhaps his choice of phrasing has been unwise.

He decided to try a different tack. "You've been cheating, haven't you? Somebody has to have been helping you out. It's Weasley isn't it? He's been feeding you moves!"

Hermione narrowed her eyes. She began to stand up and shout at him over the chessboard, but a strong feeling of deja-vu made her sit back down again in a hurry. "I'll have you know that Ron is rubbish at muggle style chess and what's more, I'm perfectly capable of winning without any help!"

"Then why were you letting Eric help you?" Ginny was sat on the couch, reading through one of the mail order degree packs and occasionally making notes in the margins.

"Who's Eric?"

"He is," responded Ginny, pointing at the waffle iron.

As if on cue, the waffle iron hopped backwards and opened and closed its lid. Snape looked conflicted. On the one hand he now had proof that Hermione had been cheating, but on the other hand this would mean acknowledging the existence of a sentient waffle iron.

"There it is," Harry said as he sprinted from the kitchen. "I've been tracking him all day. He'd better make some bloody good waffles."

At his approach Eric backed up and left off a steamy hiss.

"That's it!" Ginny exclaimed. Hopping up, she dashed up the stairs as a much harried and still naked Ron came down.

"What's she on about?" Ron asked, but the question went ignored in the events that followed.

Harry lunged at the waffle iron and as if in slow motion, it leapt out of the way and barrelled towards Dumbledore, who was napping in front of "The O.C." Hermione and Snape watched like tennis spectators as the out of control appliance knocked the ab-roller from the sleeping wizard's beard and ricocheted off the plastic to fly - iron open - at Ron.

His dive for cover came too late. The steaming mad iron landed open faced against the most delicate part of the Weasley anatomy. The resultant shriek shattered the downstairs windows.

"I think," said Hermione slowly, once the screams subsided, "that Ron might be through with nudity for the time being."

----------

"Let me get this straight."

Voldemort was sitting on Draco's bed, talking with Ginny. Quirrell had been leafing through Draco's back issues of Cosmo, but had put them away and begun paying attention to the conversation after a pointed cough from Voldemort.

"You're trying to tell me that the reason you were having a staring contest with a waffle iron was that it was - in fact - alive."

Ginny nodded solemnly.

"Not only this, but you claim the waffle iron is called Eric and will save wizarding society from the greatest evil it has ever known."

Ginny nodded again.

"Because I was under the impression that was Potter's job. I'd been led to believe that the boy was your last hope."

"No," Ginny said. "There is another."

"Fine," said Voldemort, standing up. "I'm going to get it right this time. No failed attempts on newborns which can grow up to defeat me. That waffle iron is going DOWN!"

It was at this point that Ron staggered past the doorway on the way to his room. Voldemort took a good look at the diamond print scar.

"On the other hand, biding one's time is a well respected villainous strategy."

----------

Against all odds, Ron had maintained his "lifestyle choice" for the rest of the evening, despite all the associated injuries. Upon his reappearance in the living room later, Hermione had engaged him in a game of chess. This was partly to make Ron hide the more disturbing of his injuries under the table and partly so she could try out her new chess moves on someone who probably wouldn't notice if Eric helped her out a bit.

However, Ron was not nearly as unobservant in this capacity as Hermione had hoped.

"Oi, since when are you good at chess?"

Dismissing the idea of letting him know he was really being beaten by a waffle iron, Hermione smiled sweetly.

"Oh, y'know I've got all the tactical skills to be a natural at strategy games."

"You always said the game was a pointless exercise when we played at school."

Ron crossed his arms over his disturbingly pale and freckled chest. Hermione repressed a shudder. Eric the waffle iron wriggled his flex, causing Hermione to move into checkmate

"When I left school, I was but the learner. Now I am the master!"

Ron stood up in outrage revealing all that had been hidden under the table. Hermione finding her eye-level was taking her to unpleasant places, jumped up too. For a moment the two combatants stared at each other

"You're going to rise up and slay me!" Ron pointed at Hermione accusingly.

"I always thought she was a Sith Lord." Draco supplied from the couch.

Ron gaped at Draco before darting up the stairs and predictably bounding out the window. As Draco began to laugh, Hermione glared at him

"I don't appreciate being compared to Darth Vader, you know."

Hermione's glare deepened and Draco's laughter turned into spluttering and gasps for air as he began to choke. He grabbed his throat and glared at Hermione. Things could have gone very badly if Harry hadn't arrived and quickly given Draco the Heimlich manoeuvre. A green Smartie shot across the room and joined its brethren on the floor.

Draco gasped for breath.

"You okay there, Malfoy?" Harry asked.

Draco glared.

----------

The waffle iron had grown bored with the blazing argument developing in the living room and had removed himself to the hallway, where a small door partway up the wall led to the cupboard containing the electrical meter. Eric leaned back on his hinge and then opened his jaw violently, propelling himself with a neat jump into the meter cupboard. There was a large hole in the back of the cupboard leading into the walls of the house itself. (The hole had not been there on the housemates' arrival, but the large amount of structural damage caused since then had left odd holes and cracks in almost every wall, floor and ceiling of the building.) Fearlessly, Eric leapt.

It was sheer bad luck that Ginny happened to be passing just in time to see Eric's long power cord, swishing up after him into the meter cupboard with a distinctly serpentine motion and managed to convince herself she'd just seen a basilisk heading to its lair in the walls of the house.

It was worse luck that her quest for a hiding place led her to the pantry.

----------

Outside, stark naked in the remnants of a rose bush, Ron sat twitching. He'd had enough of the house, his housemates and the indignity of his lot. It occurred to him after a moment that he was sitting on a very good idea. Slowly, he climbed out of the wreckage of the bush and apologised to Hagrid before heading for the house, covered in scratches and thorns and clutching a fistful of rosebush. Nudity, it turned out, was probably not his thing after all.

He paused for a moment on the threshold, listening to the odd noises coming from inside the house. An argument in the living room was being drowned out by screams and the sound of an engine revving.

Ginny had found the chainsaw.

**Want to see fanart for this series?  
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www . YourMotherIsAHorcrux . com**


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